Twist of Fate
by saviourshope
Summary: Since the shooting at the Captain's funeral Kate has been having flashbacks, dreams of her life. While having to deal with those and her ever growing feelings for Castle, the partners have to solve the mysterious murder of a boy who went missing years ago
1. Prologue Magic

_**Authors note:** This is my first try of a fanfiction, so please don't be to harsh xD Haha no, actually I would love some critic that I can use ;) English is my second language and although I know it's not that bad, I know that there are still some grammatical mistakes and maybe even others, so forgive me ;) If you're a native English speaker, just point the mistakes out and I'll try to remember._

_For this first part you will have to know that I've tried to figure out how old Castle is...We know Beckett is 32 (or 33, I can't quite remember). Castle became a father when he was rather young and I'm guessing he would have been 20-22 or so. That would make him between 38 and 40 now and therefore 5 to 7 years older than Beckett. _

_And yeah, the prologue seems short...the next parts will be longer...  
><em>

_I don't own the characters!_

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><p><strong>Prologue<strong>

There was a lot of laughing going on inside the shop that the thirteen year old girl entered with a huge smile on her face. A lot of people were inside looking at all the amazing stuff that was for sale. In one corner a crowd had come together, forming a circle around someone. Curious the girl stepped closer and saw the owner of the shop performing some magic tricks, one of his sons carefully observing him.

"Katie" a voice behind her called out and the girl turned around to smile at her grandfather.

"I'm here, don't worry!" she said and continued to watch the magicians little show.

She loved the stuff he could do, pulling a flower bouquet out of nowhere, letting his son vanish or making a tissue disappear in his hand and letting it reappear in the audience. Of course she knew those were all just tricks and she also knew most of them herself but it was still fun to watch. After a few minutes the owner of Drake's Magic Shop bowed in front of his audience and welcomed them to have a look around, he would be happily helping them choose whatever trick toy they wanted to buy. Katie smiled and started to roam the shop, looking here and there at all the toys, the boxes, the just magical looking things when suddenly she bumped into someone in front of her.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, sir," she apologized under her breath, blushing. "I didn't pay attention."

The young man standing in front of her smiled.

"Nothing to worry, pretty lady," he said nonchalantly, "I'm happy to be bumped into anytime."

Katie laughed shyly. "No, no, it won't happen again," she gave back and was on her way to her grandfather when the young man called her back.

"Wait, you forgot something," he said, stepping up to her and skilfully conjured a coin from behind her ear.

"Very good," she teased, "but I know that trick and I'm sure I can do it better than you".

He did not expect that and laughed. "You are a clever girl with gorgeous eyes. Now take the coin and learn some more magic tricks," he told her before turning around and going back to the things he was looking back before the girl had bumped into him.

Satisfied with herself, Katie went up to her grandfather.

"I could spend ages in here," she sighed and he nodded his agreement.

"But, we have everything for today, so let's go, sweet girl."

Katie shrugged and walked to the counter. "Grandpa, can I have one of these?" she asked and pointed at some of the fake bugs on the counter.

"I can pay them myself," she added and her grandfather looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

"How come, you didn't bring any money…?" he wondered and Katie showed him the coin.

"He gave it to me because I bumped into him…," she said and pointed at the young man from before.

Her grandfather was about to say something when shop's owner showed up behind the counter and smiled. "Nice man, young Ricky, isn't he", he stated and let Katie pay her bugs.

When Katie and her grandfather left the shop, she quickly turned back to see Rick watching her. She waved good bye as the door slowly closed behind her.


	2. Chapter 1 A New Case

_**Author's note: **So here you go, the first chapter. Be patient with me and the story. I don't know how often I will be able to update once my last semester at college starts but I'll do my best. _

_I have a pretty good idea of where I want the story to go and at the moment there is a lot of case related stuff. I hope you'll like it anyways =) And wow, I'm really surprised at how many of you have already subscribed to the story, thank you! _

_From here on I'm in pretty unknown territory. I try to research as much as I can to be authentic but with some stuff like medical things I can't always be 100% sure, so forgive me for that. _

_I'll shut up now and hope you like the chapter. _

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><p><strong>Chapter 1<strong>

Detective Kate Beckett was driving her car through the crowded New Yorker streets getting ready to do her job. It wasn't easy being a cop but she liked what she was doing. To her it was a way of coping with her own past, the past she couldn't forget and couldn't solve. But she'd never lost hope and she knew that with what she was doing people with the same experience as hers wouldn't lose hope either.

She passed around the corner of Amsterdam and 88th, found a parking space and got out of her crown vic. It wasn't hard to find the crime scene with all the busy voices coming from it.

As she walked up to the yellow tape and ducked under it she heard a familiar voice.

"Good morning, Detective," it came from her left. She looked up and smiled at Richard Castle, her civilian partner in crime solving.

"Good morning back, Castle," she said and he returned her smile.

_Richard Castle…_ she thought with a heavy sigh. Oh how he'd gotten on her nerves years back when they first met. Sure, he was and still is her favourite author but why he'd had to pick her as his inspiration for a new book was beyond her even now. Still, over the years she had learned to accept and enjoy his presence and even more so, his help. He may be annoying from time to time but his insights, his theories could actually be really helpful because even when they were wrong they helped her jog her memory and come up with something herself.

And then there was one fact that she only recently had come to fully admit to herself and that was that she had fallen for this writer harder than any other guy ever before. She had never wanted to let it on but she could not hide from her feelings anymore. Just like now she could feel the butterflies in her stomach every time she saw him or even just thought about him and she knew it was the same for him. But she had not told him a word. Not that she loved him and not that she knew that he loved her. It was probably the biggest secret she had ever kept. Even more so, probably the biggest lie she had ever told anyone. _I don't remember anything…_

Pulling her out of her thoughts Castle handed her a coffee and she smiled a little broader at him. The coffee. One of the small things she appreciated about Rick. It was his way of looking out for her. "Thanks," she said gratefully, taking the coffee and carefully sipping from it.

"So what have we got?" she asked as her team caught up to her and Castle.

"A wonderful good morning to you too, Detective Beckett," came the snappy answer of Detective Ryan. She just rolled her eyes at him and then looked at Detective Esposito.

"Fill me in, Espo."

Esposito threw a grin at his slightly flabbergasted partner – who by now should be used to such a treatment – and then beckoned Beckett to follow him to the victim.

"Caucasian male, approximately sixteen to eighteen years old, no ID. Lanie says COD is most likely blunt force trauma to the head but she's gotta check back at the morgue, as always."

Just as he finished with that they reached the body where ME Lanie Parish was still crouching over the young man's figure. She'd heard the last part and added: "I can also give you TOD back at the lab. It was freezing cold last night, so it could be anywhere between 7pm night before last and 5am this morning".

"So who found the body?" Beckett asked and this time Ryan was the one with the info.

"The poor lady over there. " He pointed over to an old woman talking to Officer McCarthy.

"She placed a 911 call at 6.30 this morning. Said she was walking her dog when he ran off and she had to follow him. Moaned a lot about it, too, with her being old and slow on her legs. She'd eventually caught up with her dog who had most likely smelled something behind the dumpsters. That's when she'd found the boy."

"Okay. Make sure we get her full statement and then canvass the area for any witnesses and a wallet. Castle and I are going back to the precinct to find out who the vic is. You should take a picture as well to show around. Maybe someone in the neighbourhood knew him."

Ryan and Esposito nodded and walked away to do what they were told while Beckett leaned down to examine the body again. She felt Castles presence next to her and it gave her a twinge in the stomach. She didn't know for how much longer she'd be able to hold her feelings back. Knowing he loved her as much as she loved him and not being able to just dive into a relationship with him was heart-wrenching. But it had been her decision and she had to live with it. She also still knew that she had to be ready first and she wasn't ready yet.

This time it was Lanie pulling her out of her thoughts with that _"Get on with it, girl"-_look she always had when Castle was so close to her. Kate ignored it and looked at the boy on the ground. He was slender and tall with blond hair that made his young face look even younger. He was wearing worn out jeans, a T-Shirt and noting but a rather thin jacket. It had been cold over the last couple of days, he must have been freezing.

To Detective Beckett it was always hard to see another dead body, how could it not? But with kids it was the hardest. She valued life and the boy here had his taken away from him far too soon.

"Esposito said COD was blunt force trauma but what about those bruises around his neck?" she asked her best friend.

"Maybe they're hickeys" Castle commented. She ogled at him and supressed a smile. She'd wondered where his out of place comments had been and was glad he wasn't completely shutting up at the moment. She was always glad for some distraction of this kind at a crime scene; it made things a little easier to cope with.

But Lanie raised an eyebrow at him and looked at Kate again.

"First, they're not hickeys. Second, I don't think that strangulation is cause of death because those bruises aren't deep enough. He was in a struggle all right but as I said before you'll get you're details once I'm back in my lab."

Kate nodded and started to look through the boy's pockets. Not that they had not been checked already but she liked to be in control so she did everything herself again. There was nothing to be found that CSU or the boys had not already taken care of so she got up again.

"Call me, when you know TOD or find something odd!" she told Lanie, then looked at Castle to tell him to get going. He got up again as well with a sad look on his face and nodded.

Together they walked back to her car and on the way she cast repeated looks towards him, wondering what was wrong.

"You alright, Castle?" she finally asked, not sure whether it was a good idea. He just looked at her and nodded his head back to where the body was.

"He's not that much younger than Alexis…"

She could have guessed. Of course his thoughts were with his daughter, they always were when children, or in this case teenagers, were involved. She nodded slightly, an understanding smile on her face.

"He probably isn't. But did you look closely, Castle?"

"Why?"

"His clothes, his skin, his hair. He lived on the streets, Castle. He didn't have a home. This is going to make it harder for us to figure out his identity but as sad as it is, kids from the street have a hard time; they live on the edge of everything. The edge of society, the edge of life…It's not fair but it is what it is…"

Now it was his time to nod.

"You're probably right, but it's just so sad and I couldn't imagine…" They had gotten to the car by this time and Beckett placed a hand on Castle's arm.

"We will find out what happened, we will solve this case like we always do," she told him reassuringly and he smiled at her, lips pressed together, before she opened the car and they both got in.


	3. Chapter 2 And an Old Case

_On we go... You could make me really happy, if you left a small comment/review so I know if you like it and if I can continue (okay, I'll do that anyways xD)_

_ Thanks for reading!_

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><p><strong>Chapter 2<strong>

The car drive to the precinct was a quiet one. Even though Beckett had tried to comfort Castle a little, he still had the boy and his close age to Alexis in mind and so he stared texting his daughter. Beckett didn't interrupt him she knew he needed to know that his little girl was alright.

His daughter had been the first thing to make her see the real Richard Castle and not the playboy writer that signed chests at book openings like he had done the first time she'd met him. A smile crossed her face when she thought about the young woman that was in a way so different from her father and still so like him. Alexis cared so much for her family, for everyone she loved actually. Kate remembered the hostage situation in the bank quite a few while ago. Alexis had been so concerned, had even shouted at the Detective. She had never seen her like this but considering that her family had been in the bank, it wasn't surprising. Kate herself had been a wreck that day. She had been very, very close to telling Castle everything.

The look in his eyes after they had found the hostages after the explosion was so full of relief and love and she had seen her own eyes reflect in his with the same expression. She sometimes wondered what would have happened, had Martha not interrupted the moment.

And the situation with the tiger? Not in any way less dangerous. But at least they went through that together, her and Castle, and somehow she had felt like she had just caught a glimpse at their possible future.

Beckett had felt so bad afterwards, knowing that once again she had put a child's father into grave danger. Of course she could never have known that they would get drugged while trying to solve the case and get trapped in a basement with a tiger on the other side of the wall but it didn't change the fact that she put Castle in danger with every new case. They never knew how dangerous it could get. They could solve a crime in just a few days, maybe it took them much longer and maybe they could never really solve it just like her mother's murder or her own shooting…

She pulled up by the 12th now and parked her car. Castle looked up from his phone when the motion of the car stopped and turned his head towards her. He smiled apologetically for being preoccupied by his phone but with a smile and a wave of her hand she signalled him that it was okay. They didn't need words for this; they completely understood each other without them.

They both got out of the car, entered the building together, passed security and stepped into the elevator where they already found Captain Gates inside.

"Good morning, Sir" the two of them greeted in unison while Captain Gates nodded her head.

"Any information on the body yet?" she asked.

Beckett shook her head. "Ryan and Esposito are still canvassing the area, Castle and I were just on our way to go look through missing persons."

"Good, keep me updated," the Captain said before the elevator came to a halt on the fourth floor and the three got out.

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><p>It was almost noon when Ryan and Esposito returned to the precinct where Castle and Beckett had feverishly been trying to find anything on the victim. They had just extended the search on missing persons to six years because nothing had popped up before.<p>

"Anything?" Beckett asked Esposito with a hopeful look on her face but he just shook his head. "Nothing useful. It's not really an area with many street kids hanging around and the neighbours didn't notice anything."

"Yeah, it really isn't an area for a those kids to hang around…" Beckett thought aloud and with a pensive look on her face. Castle looked at her.

"You got any ideas?" he asked but she shook her head no.

"Not yet."

At that moment her computer gave a signal and the picture of a young boy popped up. "Matthew "Matty" Downing. Born July, 3rd 1996, went missing six years ago." Ryan read out loud what everyone could see on the screen.

"Downing, Downing…," Esposito heard Castle murmur beside him.

"Yo bro, you know him?" he asked and released Castle from his mantra.

"Yeah…I think so, at least the name sounds somewhat familiar. But I can't place it right now …," he said and once more sank back into thoughts while Beckett spoke of the old case.

"I remember the case. It was big in the news. Some wealthy kid went missing in Central Park in bright daylight. The family never got a ransom call or anything. It became a cold case after about a year and the police assumed the boy was dead." The two other detectives looked at Beckett and nodded. They remembered it as well.

All of them jumped as Castle suddenly shouted: "HA! Frederick Downing, of Downing Corporation."

Beckett – the first one to recover – nodded, "Yeah, that's the father. Why?"

"I know him. Or well, I've met him at one of Alexis's schools parent's nights. Matty is not their only kid. They have an older daughter, Nicole. She and Alexis are the same age," he explained while Ryan checked in the report what relatives had been listed.

The strange feeling Castle had had this morning when they had found the boy just got a little worse. Now the boy was not just close to his daughter's age, he knew the family, it was more personal now. Sure, he didn't know the Downing's very well but he had met them after their son had gone missing. It broke them.

"Carrie and Frederick got a divorce I think," he now said. He remembered only seeing one of them at every parent's night, two years after Matty's disappearing.

Ryan nodded at that point. He had his eyes still fixed on the screen while he said: "Carrie has custody, Nicole lives with her in Manhattan. Mr. Downing is still living at their old place on the Upper West Side." They all exchanged a quick look, all asking themselves whether it was a coincidence that they found Matty pretty much just around the corner or if he had been on his way to see his father.

"Okay, come on Castle, let's go see Mr. Downing," Beckett spoke while grabbing her coat and walking towards the elevator. She quickly turned around to wait for Castle and gave the boys some instruction.

"You guys check out the old case, see if you can find anything that could help us!"

As soon as they were in the elevator, Beckett's phone buzzed. She identified the caller as her friend down at the morgue and took the call.

"Hey Lanie, got anything?" she asked.

"Yeah. Can you come by? There are a few things I'd like you to see," Lanie answered and Kate nodded, forgetting for a moment that Lanie could not see her.

"Sure, we're on our way," she then said and hung up.

"The morgue, and then ," she stated, still looking at her iPhone.

"You mind if we get something to eat as well? We haven't had our lunch yet…" Castle reminded her and she smiled.

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><p>A few minutes later Beckett parked her service car outside the morgue and she and Castle went inside to find Lanie waiting for them.<p>

"Hungry?" the writer asked her and handed her a bag with a huge sandwich in it.

"You read my mind, Richard Castle, you read my mind. Or my stomach for that matter." She smiled and thankfully took the bag.

"Okay, first work, then eating," the ME claimed, put the bag aside and drew back the white sheet a little that covered Matthew Downing's body from head to toe.

"First things first, before you ask. I narrowed TOD down to sometime between 11pm and 1am last night. COD is as I predicted blunt force trauma to the head with a sharp edged weapon of some kind. I found traces of rust and iron in the wound."

"And the bruises?"

"I'm coming to those. Again, as I said, they are strangulation marks. Here, you see the different spots? They're from the person's hand and those fine lines indicate that he was wearing gloves," she explained, pointing with her finger at the victim's neck.

"Okay but that's all stuff you could have told me on the phone," Kate stated impatiently.

"Now just let me finish, girl… Here comes the thing. The marks are definitely pre-mortem and stating from coloration I'd say they pretty much fit the timeline of his death. Now look at this," she said and turned to the X-Rays. "See that?" she asked, pointing at the skull where the deep fracture from the deadly blow could still be made out although all of it looked pretty much shattered. But Castle and Beckett nodded in unison, seeing where their friend pointed at.

"Here, the angle clearly shows that whoever killed him was standing behind him. He had to have enough force to do this so he was probably standing above him as well…"

"He?" Castle interrupted her, "could it not have been a she as well?"

"_The_ killer, Castle. It's a habit to say he so yes, it could also have been a girl if she was strong enough. What I'm trying to tell you is…"

Castle interrupted her again: "That if the strangulation marks fit into our timeline of Matthews death…"

Kate caught up with his chain of thought and continued: "And he was killed from behind…"

"And the marks clearly show he was strangled from the front…"

"He might have been attacked by more than just one guy," Beckett finished all the while looking at Castle who, very intensely, looked right back at her.

When she turned around to Lanie again, her friend was looking at her with a smirk on her face and a raised eyebrow. Kate blushed slightly. "Thanks Lanie," she said and was about to turn around and leave when the ME once again called her back.

"Not so fast, Detective Beckett. I have one more thing to show you and you are not going to like it…," she spoke and put on the other X-Rays. What Castle and Beckett saw on those pictures made both feel sick. The boy's bones had been broken several times, there was almost none that didn't have a mark on it and those breaks were not from the beating he had before his death, those breaks were years old.

Matty Downing had been abused.


	4. Chapter 3 The Mysteries Begin

_**Author's note:**__ On we go. I hope you like it cause I kinda do =) I'm looking forward to see where the story is going cause it's kinda funny. I write and then suddenly something is there that I didn't plan, but it just works and I love it._

_Enjoy and review ;D_

_(Edit: I thought I had changed all the names that had been erased..For some reason doesn't like me writing Mr . Downing (without the spaces -.-) I changed it now, it should make more sense xD)_

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><p><strong>Chapter 3<strong>

Still shocked about Lanie's findings, Castle and Beckett entered the building to Mr Downing's apartment. Beckett flashed her badge at the doorman, telling him they were here to see Mr Downing. He nodded and they were allowed to walk through. On the elevator ride up, the detective composed herself, became her professional self again that had now to tell a father that his son was dead. The son that had been thought to be lost if not dead already. The son that he had worried about for the past six years, the son who had actually still been alive but had now been found dead only a couple of streets away.

Beckett knocked on the door, knowing the doorman had probably called up already and Frederick Downing must be waiting. Her thoughts were confirmed when the man opened his door with a slightly confused but not very surprised look on his face.

"Detective Kate Beckett," she introduced herself and was about to introduce Castle as well, when Frederick spotted him himself.

"Richard Castle?" he asked even more confused than before.

"The one and only," Castle shrugged, knowing the other man did not speak to the writer but to the father of his daughter's classmate.

"Long time no see, Mr Downing."

Mr Downing nodded and with a wave of his hand asked them inside his apartment. It was richly furnished but it didn't look jammed. The open spaced living room was delicate in white and Beckett was fairly certain that nothing in here had changed very much since Mr and Mrs Downing had gotten divorced. She could still see the female's touch in everything. The big painting that hung above the fireplace was a replica of Caspar David Friedrich's "Morning" and in so many ways it didn't fit into the picture of this home so that Beckett wondered how long this painting had been here. She guessed it was put there a few years after Matty's disappearing. It seemed like the painting mirrored a lot of the emotions that must have come up after this dramatic experience.

"Please, take a seat." Mr Downing's voice took her back to reality and she saw him pointing at the couch in front of her.

"Thank you," she said as she and Castle sat down and before she could say anything Mr Downing asked: "You're from the police? Did something happen to my daughter?"

Beckett shook her head.

"No, it's not about your daughter, it's…about your son," she explained a little hesitantly.

Mr Downing's eyes darted from Detective Beckett to Castle and back and neither of them was certain of what they could see in his eyes. Was it surprise, relieve, fear?

It was essentially all of that and pretty much in this order. First surprise because had never thought he'd hear anything about his son again, and then relieve over the fact that now he had and then fear. He had now finally remembered why Richard Castle was here. He had just realised that the writer was shadowing a homicide detective, the one who now sat opposite himself. His eyes now rested on said detective.

"You're homicide…right?" he asked, not able to keep his voice from shaking.

"Did he…did you…?"

He could not bring himself to finish the question as the answer was written all over the faces of Detective Beckett and Richard Castle.

Mr Downing took a deep breath, clasping his hands together to keep them from shaking.

"I'm…_We_'re very sorry, Sir. We found your son this morning," Beckett started and before she could go on he asked: "How? I mean…"

Again he couldn't go on, the realization that it was over now, that they had finally found Matthew after all these years and still in New York…It was too much.

"He was…beaten to death," Kate explained, knowing that the truth sounded terrible but that it was for the best. Especially when she thought about the fact that she had even worse news.

"Beaten? No…I mean…how…how can you tell it's my Matthew?"

Castle and Beckett exchanged a look both realising that Mr Dowing had not yet grasped the full meaning of their coming here. He thought they had found Matthew's remains, decomposed and beyond recognition or something of that kind.

"Uhm…. We…assume that, when your son went missing six years ago, he was kidnapped."  
>"Yeah, I know. But we never got a ransom call…just the statement…"<p>

"We're working on that…What I want to say is that…Matthew was alive until last night."

Frederick Downing went from his sad, relieved, surprised, scared emotional state to completely speechless. All colour drained from his face and he sat there, ashen and shocked. He slowly put his head in his hands, shaking it all the while and silently saying "No, no, no" over and over again.

He could not believe what he'd just heard. How was that possible? How could Matthew have been alive all these years but not with them? How was it possible that they had never heard a word from him? He had so many questions in his mind and no idea where to start and what to do.

"Mr Downing? Frederick?" Castle asked, speaking for the first time since they had entered the apartment. He and Mr Downing really never had much to do with each other even if their daughters were the same age and went to the same school. At this very moment though, Castle, as a father and a writer, could vividly imagine what was going on in Mr Downing's head. He must be devastated. And this was why Castle thought calling him by his first name might help, might give some kind of comfort.

And it did. At least it made Mr Downing look up.

"I know this is hard and we are very sorry for your loss," Castle spoke and looked over to Beckett.

Again Mr Downing nodded.

"You know, it's weird. For the past six years I assumed my son was dead and it hurt. It hurt a lot. My wife left me, took my daughter with her as well, I struggled to keep the business up but nothing prepared me for this…I know that deep down I always thought Matty was still alive. But knowing that he really was and that I lost him again now, it makes it even harder."

Beckett and Castle listened, surprised at how open the man in front of them was. Then again, he lost again what he loved and had thought lost before, he had nothing else to lose now.

"May I ask you a question?" Castle inquired and after Frederick nodded went on: "Back when Matty went missing…You must have thought of why someone would take him from you."

Again nodded.

"Of course. There was nothing else I asked myself back then. And still do. But I can't come up with an answer. Matty was such a kind and sweet boy. He made friends easily. Maybe that was what made me lose him. He trusted so quickly and without thinking. We always told him to be careful, to not go with anyone he didn't know but it seems like he did anyway."

He sat in silence for a moment, staring at some point on the wall, reminiscing the days when his son's laughter had filled the apartment. When he looked away, he smiled lightly but sadly at Beckett.

"There was no reason to take him away from us. That's why my wife gave up hope of finding him sooner than I did. It's what made us break up."

Beckett gave an empathetic nod just as they could hear the door to the apartment opening up. All three turned their heads to see who was coming. Castle and Beckett had not thought that Mr Downing was not living alone but when Beckett let her gaze roam around the place again she could see the hints. The living room may not have changed since Mrs Downing had moved out but the touch of a female hand was still visible. And Beckett remembered the open kitchen and dining room down the hallway and how tidy that had looked, the table decorated with flowers and all.

"Dad?" a girl's voice rang through the place and Mr Downing was startled. He hadn't assumed Nicole would be home so soon but when he looked at the clock it was already later than he'd thought.

"In the living room," he answered and soon enough a slender girl peeked around the corner. Castle had not seen her in years he was certain and even if he had he probably wouldn't have known her. He remembered her with long soft brown hair and a healthy tan. She now wore it in dreadlocks and in a ponytail. Her left eyebrow and lower lip were pierced and Castle could see she played with the lip piercing as she looked at Beckett and Castle.

"Hey Mr Castle," she greeted with a light surprise in her tone but remembering him nonetheless. "Hey Nicole," he said with a small smile as Nicole nodded towards Beckett. "What's up dad?" she asked and stepped into the room.

Castle had expected to see her barefoot but remembered that that would be too cold for anyone right now. He quickly scanned the girl that he had known so long ago, realising that, unlike Alexis, she had changed a lot. Of course his daughter had grown and become more mature – if that was even possible in her case – but Alexis had never had a complete makeover if one didn't count the one time she had wanted to join the cheerios and had been walking around in their costume. Nicole on the other hand, who in fact used to be in the cheerleading squad, had had a complete change of heart. She wore olive green loose trousers and a brown T-shirt with a yellow tree printed on it and a rainbow coloured woollen cardigan on top of it. The wooden necklaces completed her hippie outfit and Castle had to hide a smile as he tried to imagine Alexis wearing all that.

"Nicole, this is Detective Beckett," her father introduced the girl and shook Castle out of his thoughts. "Detective Beckett, this is my daughter Nicole."

They both nodded again as Nicole sat down next to her father and Beckett looked at the two of them.  
>Mr Downing saw the confusion on the detective's face and smiled slightly.<p>

"Excuse me Detective," he began, "My daughter only recently came back to live with me, I sometimes forget that it's constant."

Beckett sensed that there was a story behind all that but also sensed that she would not hear it right now.

"Dad, what's going on?" the girl finally asked and her father looked at her with a stern but still sad expression on his face. The colour had returned to his face a little and he now took his daughters hand.

"They're here about Matty. They…they found him today. He's…dead," he whispered because his voice was not capable of anything else and he squeezed his daughter's hand as she looked at her father first, then at Castle and finally rested her gaze on Beckett as her eyes asked the question her mouth couldn't ask. Beckett nodded and Nicole let out a silent sigh.

"We knew that already…it's just a confirmation now…right?"

This time no one nodded and as it slowly began to dawn on the young woman she withdrew her hand and just like her father before, lost all colour. "He…he was alive?" she stuttered in disbelieve and saw the adults exchange quick looks.

"Something is odd here," Beckett claimed once they were in the elevator again. She and Castle only had to exchange a brief look, once Nicole grasped the meaning of their coming, to know it was time to leave. They of course had had more questions but with the young lady there, Mr Downing had first to explain to her what had happened and they needed some time to themselves, so Castle and Beckett had given them their condolences again and left.

Castle nodded now.

"I thought Carrie Downing had custody," he thought aloud and looked over to see Beckett frown. He could almost see how her brain was working, trying to figure something out. She didn't seem to realise that he was watching her, so he just waited and fair enough, as if she'd felt his eyes on her, she looked at him again.

"Sorry," she apologized with a slight shake of her head. "And yeah, she does. At least that's what Ryan said."

Beckett took out the phone and dialled Ryan's number.

"Ryan, did you two find anything useful yet?" she asked as soon as Ryan answered the phone.

"No. We can debrief you once your back but we haven't found anything that could be relevant to the murder case yet. There's so little information it's hard to believe. There were a few suspects back then, some people who hung around in the park and seemed suspicious but they all cleared so no one looked into them any further," Beckett heard Ryan's answer. She'd forgotten to put the phone on speaker so Castle was once again leaning closer, holding his ear to her phone and Kate felt something like an electric shiver going through her body. Maybe she forgot the speaker on purpose…

"Well okay, dig deeper and see if you can find something on the suspects from back then. Who knows, maybe they did something stupid in the meantime that could help us. Castle and I are off to Mrs Downing. Which reminds me, you did say that Carrie Downing had custody, didn't you?"

"Yes. Why?"

She didn't answer that and instead asked another question: "Has anything else turned up on that matter?"

"No. Again, why?"

"I'll tell you when we're back. Tell Gates where we are in case she asks!"

She hung up and looked at Castle who hadn't drawn away yet. The closeness let her cheeks blush a little and the almost hidden smile on Castle's face let her know he saw it. That made her blush even more and she had to catch her breath as she quickly turned away.

Beckett was glad when they stepped out and she was free to breathe again. Castle was still smiling or much more smirking.

Last summer, after Beckett had told him that she didn't remember his confession of love he had been devastated. He had laid his heart open for nothing and when she didn't call him for three months it made it worse. But very slowly he had noticed how Beckett started to change. It was rather subtle but it was there. She was opening up a little more and he enjoyed it. His feelings had not changed, if anything they had grown stronger. It didn't matter that she didn't know or that she didn't return the feeling but he had started to doubt that. Things like what just happened in the elevator were relatively frequent nowadays. He caught her blushing more often when she was looking at him, or averting her gaze when he sensed her eyes on him. He tried not to react to it all too often, he wanted to give her the space she needed but sometimes he just couldn't help it. Like now.

"Why in such a hurry, Detective?" he teased as she was almost running. She heard him, stopped and turned around with a scolding look on her face.

"Because I have a job to do. Would you hurry up now!"

He chuckled, caught up with her and let it go which she was glad for. She hated how well he knew her and how easily he seemed to read her. No, she actually didn't hate it but she never knew what to do when he did it.

Together they exited the building and once more got into the crown vic.

**Hit the review button, I'd really like to hear your opinions! :D**


	5. Chapter 4 The Writer and His Notebook

_**A/N:** __And here we go again. This is a rather long chapter, but you won't be disappointed. At least I hope you won't. _

_I've been over it a few times, I hope I managed to find all typos, sorry if I didn't._

_Enjoy reading!_

_(Edit: Again, corrected all the missing names...-.-")  
><em>

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 4<strong>

"So? You got any theory on why Nicole suddenly lives with her father?"

Castle looked over at Beckett with a wide grin.

"Why detective, do you need my help?"

"No Castle, I just want to see if you have something. I can very well figure it out by myself. You know our precinct worked pretty well too before you came along."

"Sure it did. But it wasn't as much fun."

She couldn't tease back there because Castle was absolutely right. She'd even told him that herself. After a quick glance his way she set her eyes back on the street again. For some reason the streets in New York were always far too busy and it took them a while to get from the Upper West Side down to Manhattan.

Beckett tried to avoid the most crowded streets but it didn't really help that much. At a traffic light she stared out the side window and caught a glimpse of a young couple. The red headed woman was pushing an empty buggy and the father was holding the child in his arms. But the family didn't look all that harmonious, it seemed like the parents were fighting. Something about that picture seemed oddly familiar to the detective but she couldn't place it. She blinked and looked over again but the couple had vanished out of her sight.

Just then, the light turned green again and she drove away.

"Beckett? Hello, earth to Beckett?"

With a confused look on her face she realised that she had just missed the junction to Mrs. Downing's apartment.

"You know, you could have said something," she said with a raised eyebrow.

"Hey, I did! You were like totally off the planet. Which, by the way, is not very safe on the street. You should let me drive!"

Beckett threw her head back and let out a laugh. "Yeah right. This is how you try to convince me? Forget it, Castle."

She turned on the next corner, found a parking space and got out of the car, still grinning. Castle followed right behind her and together they entered yet another building to meet yet another relative of the victim. His mother.

Again when they knocked at the door they were greeted knowing they would come but still surprised. But there was something else as well. Mrs Dwoning seemed rather hostile and her high pitched voice didn't do any good to cover it..

"Detective Kate Beckett, Richard Castle," Beckett introduced themselves. "May we come in?"

"I'd rather not. I was just about to leave so would you mind coming by another time?"

Beckett suppressed a confused look. "It's about your son."

This took the woman by surprise and she opened the door some more. Beckett got a good look at the inside of the apartment and immediately understood why was trying to keep them outside. It didn't look very much like a home. There was a lot of furniture missing and lots of cardboard boxes were piled up.

Carrie Downing sighed deeply and then fully opened the door. "Well okay, come in."

Beckett smiled lightly and walked through the door, Castle followed her. Once they entered the apartment he let his gaze roam around the place. What Beckett had seen before was just a small portion of the chaos and emptiness. It was the opposite of her former husband's apartment. From what Castle could see as they were led into the living room, this flat was not very carefully taken care of. He wondered for how long Carrie had been living out of these boxes and why. In the living room there were only four wooden chairs and a table left standing, there was no couch, no television. Nothing.

"Please, take a seat," Mrs Downing said and pointed at the chairs. "I'm sorry for the mess. I'm moving out and well, I didn't expect visitors anymore. You said you were here about my son?"

Her voice was calm nothing indicated that she was in any way concerned like Mr Downing had been.

Beckett nodded. "Yes, we are. Mrs Downing, we found Matty this very morning. He was killed last night."

This time there was a slight change in Carrie's expression but again it was so unlike her ex-husband's. She seemed surprised for a moment but not very shocked.

A sudden smile spread across her face. "So Frederick was right all along. Matty was alive the past few years. I bet he's going to love to rub that in my face…"

Castle and Beckett exchanged a muddled and astonished look with each other. It seemed like Mrs Downing did not think very highly of Mr Downing which was odd considering that there had been no hostility on his side. At least they could not detect it. Then again, Nicole was supposed to live with her mother and didn't anymore so there probably was a reason for her to hate him.

Mrs Downing now looked at her two guests.

"Excuse me," she said, "I should not talk like this I know. My therapist always tries to tell me I need to stay calm but well, I can't. You said Matty was killed?"

Beckett nodded again. "Yes. Mrs Downing, when Matty disappeared, did you have any suspicions at all? Or can you think of any reason why the kidnappers would have kept your son alive?"

The woman shook her head. "I mean, Matty was a sweet boy. I never understood why anyone would take him from us. As for why they would let him live…? Same reason, he was a sweet boy."

At this, she got up again. "Look, I know I must seem like a terrible mother but I put this all behind me years ago. When we never heard from Matty again, I had to. I could not have lived on like Frederick did, always hoping against hope. Then again, I didn't really live on anyways. Look where it got me. Losing my daughter as well, being thrown out of my home." She stopped, realising she had said more than she wanted to. Her hands were balled to fists and she gritted her teeth.

"Please, I need some time to process…," was all she said.

Beckett just got up herself and gave a short nod. Then she handed her card.

"In case you remember anything," she said. Mrs Downing accepted the card and put it on the table and then led Beckett and Castle back to the door.

* * *

><p>"You know, when I said "this was odd" after we left Mr Downing's place I did not expect this…"<p>

Castle nodded his agreement as he got into the car.

"It's like she's hiding something," he added. "Like she does have some kind of theory but doesn't want to share or is scared or something."

"Mhm…" Beckett furrowed her brow. "Something definitely is going on, something very strange. I can't imagine a woman being so detached from news like we just gave her. She wasn't interested in any details."

"You think Frederick threw her out of the apartment?" Castle asked but Beckett shook her head.

"No, when they got divorced, he had to give that apartment to her so there must be another reason. And I don't think that the state of her place only changed very recently. A woman like her would not live like this if she couldn't help it. We've seen Frederick's flat, I'm sure it was Carrie who did all the decorating and arranging and stuff."

They sat quiet for a while, both thinking what had seemed so strange.

"Beckett?"

"Yes?"

"I promised Alexis I'd be home early today so we could make a father-daughter evening. Would you mind dropping me off?"

She looked at him, surprised. It was not like him to leave that early when they were in the middle of a case.

"Sure," she said anyways. Somehow she thought it in fact had to do with the case. After all he had acted weird in the morning already. That was probably when he had promised Alexis a father-daughter evening. After they'd found out that he even knew the victim's parents he had appeared a little more quiet. Now that she thought about it, he had stayed rather quiet during both interviews which was unusual.

His loft wasn't far off so they got there in no time. Beckett slowed down, stopped and let Castle get out.

"Kate? Call me if there is anything new."

She smiled and nodded. "Don't I always?"

He nodded as well. "Well, most of the time…" he said and gave an apologetic smile for leaving her already.  
>"Say hi to Alexis for me, will you!" she told him before he closed the door. Castle gave her a thumb's up and watched her drive away.<p>

Once in the elevator he sighed. He knew that Beckett had realised something was off with him but he couldn't even quite explain it himself. It probably was just the case; it was just that this one bothered him more than any other one ever had. Except maybe for Johanna Beckett's.

He now opened the door to his loft and went inside. He was met by a delicious smell and he realised that he was actually hungry.

"Hey dad!" his daughter greeted him.

"Hey pumpkin. How are you?"

"I actually wanted to ask you that question. You sounded… different this morning."

"It's just the new case," he said with a tired smile. "Have you talked to Nicole Downing lately?"

Alexis shook her head. "No. Why?"

"Well… I'll tell you over dinner. It smells delicious and I'm kinda hungry."

His daughter laughed. "When are you not…Come on, I made Ratatouille."

Together they sat down at the counter and ate in silence for a while.

"Dad?"  
>"Yes, sweetie?"<p>

"Why were you mentioning Nicole? Did something happen to her?"

Castle shook his head. "No, not her. Do you remember her brother?"

"Matty? Yeah. I sometimes saw him in the park with her when their parents were on a business trip again. She always had to take care of him. And I remember that she was devastated when they never got him back. But again, why are you asking me all that?"

"Well. We found Matthew today. He's our new case."

He told Alexis just a little bit of what he knew, he didn't want to tell her everything since he was worried enough for both of them. But Alexis was a clever girl so she immediately saw why her father had been acting so different. She tried to comfort him and in the end managed to persuade him to watch "The Ring" with her.

It was easier to be scared of something that wasn't real.

* * *

><p>After she had dropped Castle off at his loft, Kate Beckett drove back to the precinct. She had do debrief the Captain and see what news the boys had been able to get from the old kidnapping case.<p>

But her thoughts were with Castle. She wanted to do something to make him feel better, less worried for that matter but she knew that the only way to really do that was to solve this case.

They'd only had it for a day now and it was already bothering her a lot. She just didn't understand why the boy had only now returned. What was the reason, where had he been kept before, what had happened that he could come back now? The abuse must have been the reason for him not to come sooner but why had the kidnappers let him live for so long anyways? She had absolutely no answers yet and knew the questions would only get more.

With a heavy sigh she stepped into the bull pen. She couldn't see Esposito or Ryan so she first went to the Captain's office.

She knocked and stuck her head inside. Captain Gates was bent over her work and only looked up when she heard Beckett's voice.

"I'm back," she first said. Since Castle and her had been put into a basement handcuffed together and had almost gotten eaten by a tiger, she'd felt like a teenager again when it came to Gates. The new policy she had instituted was just annoying. Letting Gates know when she went out, when she came back again, where she went, with whom she went... It was like being followed and Beckett had never liked that.

Gates nodded. "Did you find out anything interesting? You know, Mr Downing is very well known in New York. It was a tragedy when his son went missing. I want this case solved as soon as possible."  
>"Yes, Sir, we all want that. And we haven't found much on the victim himself but I would like to bring Mrs Downing in tomorrow. She wasn't very cooperative today and I think she's got quite a lot to tell."<br>"Well, bring her in then," Gates said and then began scribbling on her papers again and thus dismissing the Detective.

Beckett then went to see where Ryan and Esposito were and found them working in the conference room, the table covered in case files and the two looking very tired.

"Hey. You still up for the job?" she asked with a teasing smile.

"You know, you could persuade your partner every once in a while to go over the files so we could get a break and do the leg work for once," Ryan moaned and Beckett laughed.

"Yeah well, Castle has a way of disappearing whenever something on paper is involved. I do sometimes wonder how he ever finishes his books. You got anything?"

The boys then filled her in on everything they had found out. Matty had been seen in the park, playing with some friends that day. He had also been seen walking around on his own. No one noticed that he was missing until he didn't get home in the evening. He had promised his sister to be home at 5pm for dinner but he never came. When his parents came home later in the evening he still wasn't home and they called the police. Like with every missing person's case they didn't get any help then because Matty had only been missing for a few hours and his friends were still out. The next morning the family had found a letter, written with cut out paper letters, very cliché as Espo commented, that only said that "they" had their son and nothing more. The police had then finally gotten involved but no real lead turned up. Everyone had been interviewed, the mother, the father, the daughter, friends etc. but no one had a clue what might have happened. It was soon clear though that Matty had gone missing from the park. He was never supposed to wander off alone, he had told his friends he'd be back in a few minutes but when he never returned they assumed he had changed his mind and gone home already.

As Ryan and Esposito talked, all three went back to the bull pen and started working on the murder board. After a while both detectives were tired of talking and Beckett told them to take a break. She started going over all the files herself. Again not because she didn't trust the boys to be thorough but because she knew how tiring the work could be and that at some point it was not easy to spot the odd socks, so she just went over with less tired eyes.

The boys returned and helped her again. The next time they looked up it was almost 10pm and Beckett sent them home. She needed her team to be fresh and ready in the morning.

"Only if you promise to go home too," Esposito claimed while Ryan nodded his agreement. She gave them a tired smile and nodded. It was probably a good idea to get some rest. She looked at her fellow detectives and at their seriousness. This was her family, they took care of each other like a family.

"'Kay, let's call it a night."

* * *

><p>Once Kate made it home she realised how exhausted she really was. She threw her keys on the kitchen counter, kicked her boots off and fell onto the couch, letting out a heavy sigh.<p>

She just sat there and didn't do anything. She wasn't even sure what she was thinking, if she was thinking.

Images started to flash before her eyes. A magic shop, the park, a busy street, the lake in the park and many more. Everything started to mix together as the images started to spin, then they slowed down again and focused on one picture.

She was sitting at a table of a street café with a friend. The two of them were talking and watching the streets, wondering about the lives of the people passing by. Basically they were doing what every teenager liked to do. Tatter.

On the table next to them was a young family, the parents both looked to be in their early-twenties. The little girl in the buggy was sleeping tightly. Kate thought she looked totally sweet with her hair that was as fiery-orange as the mothers and she looked so peaceful.

Liz, her friend, giggled and Kate turned towards her again with a questioning look.

"Cute, huh?"

"Yes, very. I bet she's a real charmer when awake…"

"She? I'm not talking about the kid, I meant the father!" Liz said and Kate had to put her hand in front of her mouth to stop herself from laughing out loud.

"Liz! He's too old! And married as well!" Kate replied almost breathless.

"How would you know? He could look older than he is and they might not be married…"

"Yes, they are. Don't you see the wedding rings?

"Oh…yeah. How come you always see that stuff? Really, I would not even think about looking."

"Well, I'm sure you will someday. And in the meantime I don't really know how I see it. Mom always says that as a lawyer she has to have eyes and ears everywhere. One never knows when and where something important might come up. And when I do miss something significant she comes and says "I told you so" so I try to see as much as possible."

Liz laughed. "Yeah, I know you hate when she says that."

Kate was looking over to the family again. Something bothered her about them. That's when the girl started crying and her father reached out for her. The little girl reached out her arms and smiled at her father, completely forgetting why she was crying. He took her in his arms and made a face at her that made the girl giggle and he placed her on his lap.

He then looked up and met Kate's eyes. She blushed slightly, after all she had somehow intruded a very private moment between a father and his kid, but the man smiled at her and when she smiled back she looked at the girl. It was quite unmistakable that she was the daughter of these two people. The mothers red hair and the fathers bright blue eyes.

She turned around quickly and saw that Liz had been watching them too.

"You're right…he is cute …But still, too old, taken and he's got such a sweet daughter!" Kate said and now tried to ignore the family again; it really was none of her business. Thankfully Liz had the same thought and asked her: "So Katie, do you have anything planned now, for your 16th? I mean, it is sweet 16 after all…"

Kate shook her head. "I think Mom and Dad have something planned that I shouldn't know about so I'll pretend not to know but apart from that I have no clue what to do."

She checked her watch. "God, why does Maddy always have to be so freaking late…"

Her gaze went back to the family because something had caught her eyes. It seemed like the parents were arguing over something. She knew she shouldn't listen but she couldn't help it.

"Rick, I need this! I'm not the stay-at-home wife. I miss my job and you can very well work from home," the woman said.

"Daddy?" the little girl asked.

"You're upsetting her," Rick stated, holding the girl tight. "Can we please discuss this some other time? Maybe when Lexi is sleeping?"

The woman raised her hand aggressively to call one of the waiters and let Rick paid the bill, all the while staying quiet.

"Meredith, I know that you really want to go back to work and I'm fine with that. I just think that maybe it's not the best thing for Alexis."

"Oh, now we _are_ discussing it?"

The woman called Meredith got up and loosened the breaks on the buggy as Rick tried to grab his coat and hold Alexis in place.

He watched his wife walk away and followed in a hurry. "Mer, wait! We're adults, can we settle this like them?"

She let out a laugh. "Richard, an adult…Really? Okay fine," she stopped where she was and turned around to him. "Let's settle this. I'm going back to work. You can work from home just fine and you can take care of Alexis. I'll still be coming home, won't I?" With these words she stomped off, her red hair swaying and making her look even angrier.

Rick stood there, perplexed, his daughter still on his arm and he shook his head. The girl was clinging tightly onto him and Kate could see that she felt uncomfortable. It wasn't fun for her to see that scene, now imagine being a little girl who doesn't even understand what just happened.

Kate had had a strange feeling from the beginning and now she knew why. The girl's mother was so unlike her own. She didn't think that her daughter needed her mother and that was something Kate could not really understand.

Her eyes caught sight of something lying on the ground next to the table where the family had sat before and as she looked closer she recognized it as a notebook. Somehow she was sure it was Rick's.

She got up and picked it up. "Katie, what are you doing?" Liz asked her and Kate waved with the book.

"I'll be right back. I think that's his," she said and pointed to where Rick had been standing just a second ago. "Damn it…" It slipped her mouth before she could stop it but then she let her gaze roam around the people and she caught sight of the little girls red mane and ran after them.

"Hey! You!" she called out to get his attention. "You there, with the kid!"

This made him turn around with a questioning look but when he saw her waving his notebook at him his expression turned to shocked first and then relieved.

Kate reached him then. "I think that's yours, Sir," she said, handing him the notebook. He took it gratefully as his daughter looked up, curiously looking at Kate.

Kate smiled at the girl and got one in return.

"Thank you so much," Rick said, "You may have just saved my life."

She had no idea how saving his notebook had anything to do with saving his life but she just shrugged with her shoulders.

"No problem, Sir."

"No really, thank you," he said again and the little girl mimicked him by saying "Thank you" as well.

That made Kate laugh and she shook her head. "Well, then I'm glad I could help. How old is she?" she asked, not knowing where her curiosity just came from.

"Two."

She nodded and then heard the familiar voice of her best friend calling out for her.

"Well, I gotta go again. Have a nice day," she said.

He nodded. "Thanks again and same to you," he answered as his daughter waved at Kate with her tiny hand.

Once she was back at the café, Liz and the newly arrived Madison looked at her.

"What was that all about?" Maddy asked.

"Well, I just saw that he lost his notebook and returned it to him."

"Mhm," Liz stated with a raised eyebrow and a smirk on her face.

"Oh Jesus! Just because you would have done it because he's attractive doesn't mean I had the same reason. I just felt kinda sorry for him."

Madison and Liz both laughed but Kate didn't care and sat down again.

* * *

><p>She woke up feeling rather uncomfortable and realised she had fallen asleep on the couch. That would not have been a problem, her couch was quite comfortable to sleep on but she was sitting on it, not lying. Her every limb hurt and her neck felt stiff. She tried to move it gently while at the same time trying to shake off her confusion of this dream.<p>

She had had them more often lately and had no idea why or where they came from. Not even her therapist knew about them. At least not yet.

Were they things she had seen? Or things she had imagined seeing at some point? Or things she wished had happened?

All those dreams appeared to be so real that Kate just had to believe they were some lost memories from her childhood. How she had never remembered them was a complete different matter.

But then again, she knew the brain was a mysterious thing. How could she remember such a brief encounter with someone she didn't even know back then. It would be as if Castle recalled every single autograph he ever gave. Or well, almost like that.

She got up to move around a little, get the feeling back in her legs. Then she took out her phone and saw that it was almost 3am. _Far too late…_ she thought but she still typed a quick message. She looked at it. No, she couldn't send that, not at this time of night, he would definitely read something into that…

_Was just thinking of you, hope you're okay…_

No, that really wasn't good. She didn't even know why she had typed that. She deleted the whole thing and started again.

_Just had a really weird dream. Made me think of you and your stories…See you tomorrow_

Before she could think any further she sent the message and almost immediately hated herself for doing it.

Somewhere in Manhattan a phone buzzed and woke the man. Castle looked up, sleepy, wondering what was going on. He picked up his phone and saw the message Kate Beckett had just sent him and although he was still half asleep a wide smile spread across his face.

The change he had witnessed going on with Kate had not just been imaginary, he was sure about that now.

* * *

><p><em>Well, that was it for chapter 4. Thanks for reading! Like it, hate it? Feel free to review!<em>

_I'm always happy for some constructive criticism ;)_

_The next chapter is already in progress but with my last semester of college I can't promise too many updates. I'll do my best though! =)_

_xx  
><em>


	6. Chapter 5 Broken Families

**_A/N:_**_ Yay, new chapter is ready for you to read xD I'm having just as much fun writing about the case as I have with writing about our beloved Caskett. I promise you, I have some very nice stuff planned, just be patient =) I want to savour all of the moments and that takes time ;) _

_Thank you so much for reading and reviewing, I'm glad you seem to like it and I hope you'll stick with me ;) _

_Now I don't want to say much more than ENJOY READING =) _

_xx_

_Oh, I hope I got all the typos out..sorry if I didn't, am still a non-native speaker xD_

_SOOOOOORRRY guys! I totally forgot to put in the lines that divided the different paragraphs... silly me! Gee, how could I...must have been tired...I hope it's easier to read now! (Yeah, hit me please...my stupidity hurts right now...-.-")_

_Oh, and there is a little phrase in there that I could not resist to write and it's from another book xDD Who can find it?  
><em>

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 5<strong>

She was already in the precinct craving for coffee when Castle came. She heard the elevator and saw him walking towards her with the two coffees in hand. It made her smile. He always had the perfect timing.

"Good morning," he greeted with a knowing smile.

When he'd woken up this morning he had had this feeling of having had a strange dream. He had dreamt that a text message had arrived in the middle of the night. He'd checked his phone to make sure it was a dream and when he saw that the text was in fact real he almost fell out of his bed. Kate Beckett having a dream that made her think of him?

He pulled up his chair, sat down and placed the coffee in front of her at the same time.

"So tell me, what was that dream about then?" he asked without hesitation and wiggled his eyebrows.

Beckett, who had just picked up the coffee and was about to drink from it, put it back on her desk, looking at Castle. She had not expected him to address that topic first thing in the morning. But then again, it was Castle she was thinking about so it should not have surprised her.

"Uhm. I don't know, it was just…kinda weird. You know, the weird you would come up with."

"Come on Beckett, you can't tease me at 3am with a text like that and then tell me nothing about it!"

She still looked at him, his teasing smile driving her almost crazy.

"Fine then…" she very nearly complained. "I was a teenager again in the dream and I think I met you and your family in a café…"

Castle raised an eyebrow and blinked at her. "Serioulsy? Real or not real?"

"I have no clue. That's why I said it reminded me of you. It could have been real but I'm not sure. It's like when you come up with a theory. I kinda have to work around it to find out with what you might be right and what might just be your imagination."

Beckett and Castle didn't hear one of the other two detectives arriving, they had, like so often, been caught up in their own little world where no one but them seemed to exist. Castle had leaned in over the desk and also Beckett was leaning on her elbows, facing him. They were just a few inches apart from each other.

"I'm interrupting again, aren't I?" they heard the rhetorical question Ryan asked from just a few steps to Beckett's right. They both turned their heads, not quite sure what was going on and saw Ryan nod in answer to his own question and turn around to come back later.

"Ryan, wait!" Beckett woke from her state of mind. "You got anything?"

He came back with a raised eyebrow. "I do. Because we had no idea where the boy had been the night he was killed I tried to track him down via observation cameras. He was with someone before he went into that alley. I don't know who but she might have seen something. Come take a look," he said and they followed him to the tech room.

Esposito was already there, looking at the screen as Ryan let the tape play. They all watched the street and the people walking on the pavement.

"Here we go…" Ryan said just before Matty turned around the corner. He had seen the video so often that he pretty much knew it by heart.

All four of them stared at the screen and saw someone running after Matty, grabbing his arm. They couldn't see yet who it was because that person was standing in the shadow. Matthew drew his arm away gesticulating wildly and then walked away fast. As he came closer to the camera they all leaned in closer again as not to miss the other person that again came running after the boy.

"Freeze right there!" Beckett and Castle both said loudly and in perfect unison as they both recognised the boy's pursuer.

Ryan pressed pause, the shock making his reaction quite fast. "You recognise the girl?" he asked surprised as both nodded.

Castle looked at Beckett. "I must ask Alexis if she's in the drama class…she seemed genuinely surprised yesterday…"

"I think we need to get her down here as well…"

"Yo, you two, over here? Two detectives waiting for some information!" Esposito said as he and Ryan both looked clueless at Castle and Beckett.

"It's Nicole, his sister…" Beckett cleared it up for them and the boys looked back at the monitor where the girl with dreadlocks that was holding her brother's arm again was seen on the still screen.

* * *

><p>She wasn't 18 yet so she needed her legal guardian to be with her. On paper that was still her mother and since they wanted the mother in for questioning as well it seemed to be a good arrangement. But Nicole wasn't at all happy with it so now she was sitting in Interrogation 1 with her father, Castle and Beckett while her mother was in one of the interview lounges with Ryan and Esposito.<p>

Nicole's eyes looked from Castle to Beckett to her father and never rested. She was very nervous and Beckett knew it wouldn't take that long.

"Nicole, you know why you're here?" she asked.

Nicole shook her head but then changed her mind. "You have questions of some sort?"

"Yes, we do," Beckett said and took the still out of her folder and laid it in front of the girl and her father. It was herself, holding her brothers arm and as she laid eyes on the picture she froze and went pale. Her father needed some more time to make the connection but he didn't pale, he rather gained some colour. If from anger or from embarrassment was not obvious yet.

"Nicole?"

The girl lifted her head and tried to look at her father. "I'm…dad…I…I'm…sorry!" she stuttered, put her sleeves over her hands and folded her arms in protection.

"I…I didn't know…I mean, I was going to…I swear, I had no idea!"

"This doesn't look like you had no idea."

Nicole turned back towards Beckett and sighed. "Look, I had only just found out a week ago! I…went back to mom's to get some more stuff back. She wasn't there and I couldn't find what I was looking for so I went through her boxes and found this envelope with a scrap of paper inside. All it said was "I'm alive" and there was the name tag bracelet he'd had from the day he was born."

* * *

><p>"Why am I here?" The penetrant high pitched voice of was already getting on the two detectives nerves and they hadn't even started yet.<p>

", this is Detective Esposito and I am Detective Ryan. There are still some open questions left that we have to ask you," the Detective introduced themselves and answered her question. He normally didn't do that since they were the ones asking the questions but this wasn't an interrogation, just a formal interview in a formal setting.

"I already told the other two that I have nothing to say. I put this whole story behind me years ago, I buried my son years ago, I moved on years ago. Period."

"And we are very sorry to dig it up again. But your son _was_ murdered so this is standard procedure."

The woman shrugged her shoulders and it was obvious that she didn't like the situation at all.

"Fine then," she finally said.

"Can you tell us again about the circumstances the night Matthew went missing?" Esposito now asked and sighed.

"Can't you read that in your reports?"

"Yes, but we would like to get a better feel for it and that is easier when we have our information first hand."

"We didn't think he was missing. Nicole was worried when he didn't show up for dinner but she was just a kid herself back then, she was just twelve years old. We came home later, it must have been around 9pm and Matthew never came home that late. He knew we didn't like it. It was mid-summer so the possibility was there that he disobeyed and when we called his friends parents they all said their children were still out with their nannies. We still called the cops and I know that they normally get involved quickly when a child is missing but in our case they didn't. Since his friends hadn't been back yet they assumed he must be with them."

* * *

><p>"I could hardly sleep that night. I blamed myself. I was supposed to be watching him but I left him with his friends and their nannies so that I could leave with my own friends. I told him to be home early enough for dinner. I didn't want mom and dad finding out I had left him alone…" Nicole hardly ever held eye contact, she was fiddling with the hem of her sleeves and constantly biting her lip piercing. She was definitely nervous.<p>

Beckett and Castle had listened to the same story as Ryan and Esposito and both felt kind of sorry for her. The girl had only ever wanted to be a normal twelve year old that didn't have to watch her little brother and be responsible for him. And it just fired backwards. She had to grow up much faster than a lot of other girls her age.

"They always said it wasn't my fault but I blame myself every time I think about him. When we got the letter I…I was very close to running away, chasing the bastards that took my brother. And I was just twelve years old… It was the last time that we got a sign of life from Matty until that letter I found at my mother's place…"

"How come you found him the night he was killed?" Beckett asked.

"I didn't. I mean, when I saw that message I didn't know how old it was. It could have been from the year he disappeared or form just a few weeks ago. I took it with me just because I thought it would maybe help me. He was after all my baby brother…"

She shrugged her shoulders, unsure of what to do or what to say next.

"It was coincidence that I saw him that day. I was on my way home from a friend's birthday party that had gone slightly wrong. I managed to get away before it got worse and when I was almost home I saw him. He was lingering around and something about him looked so familiar to me. As I approached him I realised why he looked familiar. He had the same features as my brother, just older. Remembering the note in my mom's apartment made me realise that it must have been true and I called after him…I called him Matty and he turned his head, looking at me. He must have recognized me too cause his face dropped and he stuttered that Matty wasn't his name, that he was called Cain and he walked away. I ran after him, I wanted to talk to him so badly!"

Nicole was close to tears now and Castle felt sorry for her. The girl was the same age as Alexis but the stuff that she had been going through since her brother went missing was more than he ever wished for any child to experience.

He looked at her and gave her an encouraging smile. She met his gaze and smiled back sadly but went on.

"He shook me off when I reached him again. He said I should leave and forget what I thought I had seen - that I had seen him - and that I was never to tell anyone about any of this to anyone.

I have no idea what was wrong with him but I he kind of acknowledged to me that I was right with the assumption that he was my brother. I mean…I haven't seen anything but him hanging around in our neighbourhood for no apparent reason so why was I to keep a secret? I don't know, I thought that maybe he was trying to find the courage to go see our father."

She looked at Frederick then and he looked at his daughter almost as if she were a stranger. He had a hard time understanding why she had kept this from him. He had always been the only one of the family to believe that his son was still alive somewhere and it would have meant so much to him and Nicole knew that. At least he had thought that she knew.

"I'm sorry, dad…" Nicole almost whispered and then looked at Beckett. "The weird thing is that he seemed worried about something. I asked him again if he really was my brother, I needed to hear it. He almost screamed at me saying and I quote: "I am NOT your brother! Just leave me alone!" and then he ran away leaving me there, not believing a single word and I swear this is the only time I saw him!"

Beckett exchanged a look with Castle. They were both a little confused with this story. There was absolutely no doubt that the boy Nicole had met was in fact her brother but his behaviour seemed odd.

"Nicole, I have to ask you this. Where were you after Matthew left you?"

"You're asking for my alibi?" she asked surprised and Beckett nodded.

"It seems like you were the last one to have seen him alive so we just need to know."

"Well, I went straight home after that…"

"?" Beckett addressed the girl's father.

"I wouldn't know. I wasn't home that night…"

"Where were you then?"

"I…was out with some colleagues from the company, we had a business meeting and continued that even after it was long over. We were out till very late in the night."

"We're going to need the names of those colleagues," Beckett said and Mr Downing nodded, writing them down on the piece of paper Beckett gave him.

"May we go now?" he asked. He didn't like the interrogation room, he felt like being watched all the time and it had a confining atmosphere that he wasn't at all fond of.

"Yes, this is all for now. But please keep yourself available, we might have some more questions."

He nodded and got up. "Come on Nicole, let's go."

* * *

><p>"Thank you, ."<p>

The voice of Detective Esposito carried over to the interrogation room and when Castle and Beckett followed Mr Downing and his daughter out of the room and turned around the corner they saw Mrs Downing coming out of the interview room.

Nicole was rooted to the spot when she saw her mother and Beckett looked from one woman to the other with a look of confusion. She had not thought that the reason for Nicole leaving her mother's place was a loathing between the two but it seemed a lot like that. The girl turned around, grabbing her father's arm.

"Come on dad, let's take the stairs" she said toneless.

"Nicole! Please!" her mother called out for her daughter.

"No, _mother_!" she replied and the way she emphasised the word "mother" made Beckett shiver.

"I am _not_ talking to you! You kept secrets from me all my life, I can't even look you in the eyes anymore, so just f***ing leave me alone!"

The mother flinched at the swear word. "You told her?" she now almost screamed, looking at Frederick Downing.

"Told her what? I didn't have to tell her anything! Whatever you think I told her, she found out all by herself. That comes from leaving your stuff lying around in that cave of yours!"

"Oh, you're blaming me again! Awesome! I am _so_ glad that we could clear this up!"

The whole precinct had gone quiet, all the detectives, uniforms and even Captain Gates had stopped their work and were listening to the family's fight.

"Well, you were the one who knew! You should have told me!"

"Tell you what?" Mrs Downing seemed confused now. "You knew just as well as I did…"

"That Matty was alive all these years? I most certainly did _not_ know that or I would have done something! Unlike you! You seemed not to care!"

"What? I didn't know that either! Whatever you saw, Nicole," she addressed her daughter again, "it was not real!"

"Just leave me alone, Carrie!" Nicole shouted and made her way down the stairs with her father following her.

Carrie Downing was still standing there, watching her family go and it was the first time that any of the people present saw her show any emotion that seemed genuine. She looked sadder and more tired than before and she didn't hide any of it.

"Good day, detectives," she then said and left for the elevator.

"And I thought my family was the broken and insane one…" Castle uttered under his breath and earned an astonished look from Beckett. He shrugged his shoulders.

"It's true…Have you looked at my family? The only people still sticking together are Alexis, mother and I. And I sometimes even doubt the sanity of the three of us. But this? We seem like a completely normal family compared to this."

Beckett gave him a lips-pressed-together-smile with a raised eyebrow. "I still wouldn't say normal, but you are definitely not a broken family," she reassured him and gave him a slight nudge with the elbow and her words made him grin a little.

"Come on, we've got work to do. Nicole doesn't have an alibi, Mr Downing's has to be checked and I want to know what Ryan and Espo got from Mrs Downing."

They walked into the bull pen together where Captain Gates was waiting for them.

"What was that all about?" she asked Beckett who just shrugged her shoulders.

"We're about to find out," she answered and picked up a white board marker to bring the murder board up to date. Captain Gates looked at her with a stern expression. She didn't like not getting the answers she wanted to.

"We have to check the alibies first but I'll have Ryan and Esposito take a closer look at Mrs Downing. She still seems to be hiding something. In fact, both her and her ex-husband seem to be hiding something…"

The Captain nodded, for now satisfied with the answer, and went back into her office.

Beckett slightly shook her head and Castle smiled. He knew that Kate didn't dislike the Captain but she had her issues with her and things like this could greatly annoy her. She was used to be able to work at her own pace and not with her superior breathing down her neck.

Ryan and Esposito had walked into the bull pen when she'd mentioned them and came up to the murder board now.

"You want us to do a back ground check on Carrie Downing?"

"Yes. I want to know why her daughter seems to hate her so much that she calls her by her first name. Who knows, something might pop up."

They both nodded.

"Did you find out anything new while interviewing her?"

Both detectives shook their heads. "Nothing more than you already told us," Esposito said and Ryan continued: "She was reserved, calm and seemed to have been fine with the situation. She told us how she and Mr Downing broke up."

"Apparently she had tried to convince him to let the thought of Matthew still being alive go and to carry on with their lives. She'd said that to him this had been a betrayal of trust and of love towards their son and that basically was the moment they knew it wouldn't work anymore. Nicole went with her because, knowing her mother was done with the subject, she knew that she wouldn't get blamed by her for the disappearance of her brother whereas with her father she would always feel guilty. didn't say why Nicole had changed her mind after six years…"

Beckett nodded. "Fine, let's dig deeper now. You guys check out Carrie Downing, Castle and I will check some alibies. Oh, that reminds me, did you ask her about hers?"

"Yes we did. She said she was at home sleeping, we should ask her doorman."

The female detective nodded again and then all four of them went back to work.

* * *

><p><strong><em>Well, well...where will all this lead to... Liked it, didn't like it? Hit the review button,<em>_ I'm always happy for some feedback =)_**

_Which reminds me: In case you haven't read it and are in dear need of some Casketty goodness in his long (yes, it is long for me...xD) hiatus, read my One-Shot "Happily Ever After?" _

_Or, if you are a Castle and Bones fan, my lovely AppleNatasa is writing a crossover called "Secrets of the Statue of Liberty" ;)_

**_And who found the phrase I smuggeled in here?_**

___Soooo sorry about the missing Names! I don't know why it did that, in my word-document they're still there..._**_  
><em>**


	7. Chapter 6 Frustration

_**A/N: **Hey guys. So, I haven't heard from Jo yet but I know he's been busy so maybe he hasn't had time to read my next chapter yet. But because I'm gonna be off to meet some Castle friends (Yay, I'm soooo excited!) I didn't want to wait any longer to upload the next chapter. I hope you'll enjoy it. _

_****I know that you probably already hate me for not giving you enough Caskett moments and I'm sorry! I just got caught up in the case! (hahaha, yeah, I almost felt like Beckett xD) But hey, I promise you, I've got a big treat for all of you in the next chapter! _

_ Btw. I like how you're trying to figure it all out xDD _

_Okay, I'll stop blabbing and let you read. Thanks for all the reviews I got so far! It's really great to hear what you think!_

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 6<strong>

"Yo! I think we got it all figured out now! Or at least some of it…"

It was late afternoon already and the team had been working non-stop. They had only allowed themselves a short half-hour lunch break to eat a sandwich in the break room and then went straight back to work. Mrs Downing's background was for some reason hard to track so at some point the boys had decided to just forget about her past and start digging closer to the present.

Kate had been calling Mr Downing's colleagues. Of course not all of them were available right away but she did already get the answers she needed and that was that the guys alibi was crumbling away slowly.

Nicole didn't have any luck either. On the murder board she and her father no longer belonged to the "persons of interest" but to the suspects although maybe the motives weren't too clear yet. But at least it was something to go on. The reason Nicole was there on that list was that the doorman to their building had seen her come home but he'd said that it must have been at least 12.15am by the time and that was right in their kill zone. And since the crime scene was only 5minutes away and Nicole had been seen close to the crime scene shortly before 11pm with the victim she was their prime suspect for now.

The mother had cleared out for the murder. Her doorman confirmed that she had come home completely wasted at 10pm. He had had to help her get up to her apartment and he said she almost fell asleep on the hallway floor.

Beckett looked over to Esposito now, an eyebrow raised in question and the detective made his way to her desk.

"Wait," she said, "let's wait for Castle or you'll have to tell everything twice, you know how he is." The writer had gotten slightly bored watching Beckett making phone calls and since their lunch had been small and already quite some time ago he had offered to get some Chinese and no one had objected.

"Can you make him hurry up then? I'm starving!"

"You're always starving," Ryan cut in and made Beckett grin. The boys and food. That was a matter of its own. Castle had been gone about twenty minutes so she knew he could be back any time now and as if he had known they were impatiently waiting he stepped out of the elevator, his arms and hands overloaded with food bags.

"Just in time, bro!"

"Yeah, perfect timing!"

Beckett smiled at her two hungry detectives and got up from her chair.

"Come on then, we have news and you have food, let's swap," she said and motioned to the conference room.

They helped Castle unload the stuff, each grabbing chopsticks and some of the food and then sat down.

"Okay, news. Good or bad or interesting or helpful?" Castle asked and took his first mouthful.

Esposito was already chewing and pointed at Ryan with his chopsticks who at that moment shoved Mushu pork in his mouth and wasn't able to speak either. Beckett shook her head but smiled.

"You guys look like you haven't had anything to eat in like a week…"

"Yweah, wewll wyou wknow us…" Espo said, chewing his bit of food, then swallowed.

"Ahhh, what a blessing. Okay, case. We're still running Mrs Downing's past but what we have found out is that she's absolutely and utterly broke. There's not a single penny left in her bank account. Or I rather have to say in any of her bank accounts. I haven't found out yet how she lost it but I think my guess is as good as any and I would say it is gambling or she very badly dealt in stocks. And I don't really believe that." He finished the sentence and stuffed his mouth again.

"I have also found something interesting. Matthew wasn't born in America he was born in a private clinic in England. They needed one of the best paediatric doctors because apparently there had been complications with the pregnancy so the whole family moved there for a year."

"Was that the interesting part?" Beckett asked and swallowed her meal.

"No, the interesting part is that they went to Europe on a longer business trip. Nicole being as young as she was, was taken with them and so the whole family was there. The Downing's are a well-known family around here, they are quite often in the press but there was never a single word about Carrie being pregnant again. Only when they didn't come home from that business trip they announced that they were expecting another child and that they would stay in Europe until it was born."

"And what exactly is weird about that now?" Castle asked.

"The fact that in the following year there was never a single word about Carries condition or about the family in general. It was as if they had disappeared from the face of the earth."

They all ate in silence for a while not quite sure what to make of this this information. Why would they hide the second pregnancy when the first was so huge in the press all the time? Castle remembered it only too well since it was the time that Meredith had been pregnant too and it sometimes was a huge public press fight of which woman would be in a magazine more often.

"That is weird…So what's the problem with Frederick's alibi? I just know you said it was crumbling before I left." He looked at Beckett who was chewing her food. She nodded and swallowed before speaking.

"Yeah well, he did meet his colleagues for a business meeting and they did carry on till late that night. The problem is that after 12am no one recalls seeing him anywhere in the club they went to.

I still haven't reached three of his co-workers but I'm hoping that one of them can clear things up some more."

Once they were done eating they were all so satiated that they could hardly move so they just sat at the conference table for some while longer leaning back in their chairs.

Ryan was on his phone, texting his wife. They still were inseparable just like before the wedding. The amount of texting Ryan did was almost insufferable at times. The team had learnt to live with it though and teased him with it just about as often as with his nickname.

Castle had his brow furrowed and was brooding over something. He felt Beckett's eyes on him and looked up.

"Hm?"

"What are you thinking about?" she asked him and he shrugged his shoulder.

"Just that what Ryan said really is weird. Had Meredith and Carrie known each other personally back then I would swear one of them would have killed the other. They were constantly fighting over some other magazine article and the fact that that didn't happen with Carrie's second pregnancy bothers me."

"Maybe she really had complications."

"Maybe…" he trailed off again and didn't realise when the detectives all got up and went back to their desks. A little bit startled at the fact that he was alone in the room he quickly cleaned up and went after them.

Beckett already had a cup of coffee ready for him, something that was normally his job. He smiled at her.

"Thank you."

"No problem."

He took a sip and sat down in his chair, taking out his phone since Beckett was already back at calling Frederick Downing's co-worker.

"Ha!"

He looked up at her, again a little startled and raised an eyebrow while she almost slammed the receiver down.

"So apparently Mr Downing left his co-workers at around 12am just as the other ones had said. The others never saw him leave but this one did. He said he had had the feeling that Mr Downing didn't want to be seen leaving so early."

"Okay, so he doesn't have an alibi…but what would his motive be? Why would he kill his son?"

Beckett shrugged her shoulders. "I have no idea as of yet…but this is reason enough to go talk to him and his daughter again. I think Nicole could clear a lot of things up for her mother too."

"Beckett?" the confused voice of Ryan carried through the bull pen.

Castle and Beckett both looked up and to Ryan's desk where the detective just got up and made his way to them.

"I found something else. Apparently Carrie has a younger sister but there is absolutely no record of her anywhere! It's like she never existed."

"God, can this case get any more weird?" she asked in frustration.

"I know! But it's kinda cool!" Castle said with a half-smile. He would find it much better if he didn't know the family.

Beckett lightly shook her head and looked back at Ryan. "Can you try and find anything? Castle and I need another talk with the ex-husband and the daughter."

Ryan nodded. "I'll see what I can do."

* * *

><p>They were once again back at the Downing's apartment. Frederick and Nicole weren't at all happy to see them back which wasn't surprising.<p>

Beckett tried to make it quick and went straight to the point.

"Nicole, you lied to us. You said you went straight home but your doorman said you got home at around 12am. Where were you between eleven and twelve?"

Nicole hesitated. She had been caught lying so now she had to be careful of what to say.

"I was upset, okay? I was so upset I needed a walk so I strolled around for an hour or so. I know, it's not a very good alibi but it's the truth." Beckett nodded, still not quite believing the girl. She seemed too nervous about all this like something was keeping her from telling what she really wanted to.  
>"And there is another question concerning your mother."<p>

"You've seen us today, Detective. There is nothing I have to say about my mother."

Beckett gave the girl a sympathetic smile. "It could help us find your brother's killer."

"How on earth should that help you?"

"We found out that your mother was broke. Maybe she got in with the wrong kind of people and they wanted to hurt her through hurting someone she cared for?"

"My mother was a wreck. That's all there is. She lost it after Matty disappeared. I just couldn't take care of her anymore. I had always taken care of Matty, I didn't want to have to take care of someone else again. And she was a handful, believe me. She kept the drinking in check but the gambling? I was glad my dad still paid for the school and I could eat there, cause my mom hardly managed to feed herself. The weekends she mostly spent in Atlantic city, losing all the money she just got from dad. And when she'd lost it all she hid in the flat, drinking or doing nothing. Sometimes she had lucky days and would win only to spend it on unnecessary TV channel merchandise. Sometimes she spent it on food too and we had the biggest meals with Caviar and all for three days and then she'd lost it again. I told her I wouldn't be there for her anymore and I moved back to dad's. Last week she lost the apartment, she has to be out by tomorrow. That's all there is!"

Nicole had rattled all that down in no time. The further she got the angrier her voice was. It was very obvious that she loathed her mother for what she did to her and in a way Castle could totally understand her. Hadn't he been in a similar situation as a teenager? His mother coming home from a performance, drunk and the next morning desperately in need of a Bloody Mary? But unlike Nicole he'd never had an option and he'd loved his mother no matter what because she tried to be a mother. She at least tired.

"Well, this might actually help…" Beckett said. If Carrie was indeed gambling and losing a lot she might have an angry loan shark somewhere who had threatened her. And since Carrie seemed to have known that her son was still alive, he'd be a good target.

"Mr Downing, your alibi doesn't check out either. You were seen leaving the bar where you were with your colleagues at around 12am. Where did you go after that?"

The man swallowed hard and threw a hesitant look at his daughter. It seemed rather weird to Beckett but when he cleared his throat she could guess where this was going.

"You didn't go alone, did you…" she stated and he nodded.

"I left alone…but I didn't go home, I met…someone."

"Mr Downing, you do realise that you lied to us just like your daughter did. We need that someone's name."  
>Castle could feel that Beckett was slowly losing her patience with this family and he completely understood her. None of them ever seemed to tell the truth.<p>

Mr Downing was uncomfortably sitting on his couch while Nicole scrutinized him. She didn't really mind her father having another woman, she was actually glad but she thought it was weird that he would keep it a secret from her especially since her mother was so open about her relationships.

Beckett raised an eyebrow at Frederick Downing and he sighed.

"Her name is Giovanna Servente, she started working at my firm about a year ago and we started dating a few months after that. I know, it's unprofessional at work but we managed to keep it secret, so if you wouldn't mind…"

"I can't promise you that, Mr Downing, the investigation will lead us where it will lead us and sometimes that does compromise some private stuff."

Mr Downing nodded. He understood, even if he didn't like it.

"One last question. You're ex-wife has a sister, right? Can you tell us anything about her?"

* * *

><p>"God, this case is so frustrating!" she grumbled in desperation once they were back in the car on their way to the precinct.<p>

"Instead of answers all we get are more questions! And we've completely neglected the whole kidnapping thing today! I feel like we're getting nowhere…"

It had been a while since he last saw her this irritated by a case but she was right. They had nothing and the murder had happened almost two days ago.

"We'll find something…I'm sure of it! We've always managed to find something!" he assured her.

"Not always…" She almost said it in a whisper, he could easily have missed it but he didn't and he hated himself for the last comment. She was right of course. Not always. Not in her case. Not in her mother's case.

And he hadn't gotten any further either although he tried, he really did. When he wasn't with her on a case, spending time with his family or writing, he was standing in front of his own murder board trying to find any link, any kind of hint that would help him. Anything that would keep Kate safe. And yes, of course, try tearing that wall down that she had spoken off that day on the swings. Then again, he knew that those walls were crumbling anyways, she seemed to have accepted that she needed to move on, that somehow her mother's murder might never get solved, that she might never get more closure than knowing that the hit man who killed Johanna Beckett was dead.

"Castle?"

She lightly touched his elbow and jolted him out of his thoughts.

"You're so very much in your own thoughts lately. Is everything okay with you?" she asked, real worry in her tone.

"I'm fine, Kate, don't worry. It's just like you said, the case is kinda frustrating and I'm trying to find anything that might help but I'm somehow just blank, totally out of ideas."

He didn't know why Johanna's case suddenly burned in his thoughts again. Yes, he had it in his mind pretty much all the time but never with this intensity. And he felt guilty about it. He knew how much it meant to Kate. Again he had to tell himself he did it for a good reason, to protect the woman he loved, he only hoped that if she ever found out she would realise that.

He got out of the car and followed her back to the precinct.

* * *

><p>Once they were in the bull pen again Beckett stared at the murder board and she stared at it as if she was about to murder it. Castle came to her side and handed her a coffee, one that she badly needed.<p>

"Thank you" she murmured and hastily took a sip.

"It's h…"

"Ouch!"

"hot" he finished his now unnecessary warning and grinned.

"Too late…" Her tongue burned from the hot liquid and she bit it to cover the pain with another one. It only helped a little.

"Ryan!" she called out and the detective looked up. "Have you found anything new on Carrie's sister?"

He shook his head. "I can't even find her name!"

"Well, that much I have. Go look for Melissa Payton."

"You're kidding me, right?"

"Why would I do that?"

"Melissa? You know Carrie's full name is Carissa? God, what imaginative parents…"

Beckett grinned. Ryan was right, how could someone name their children with so similar names. It was almost surprising she wasn't called Marissa.

Mr Downing had only very cautiously given them the name and only after Beckett pushed him to.  
>Nicole had sat there in disbelief. "I have an aunt?" she had asked and Beckett and Castle had looked at each other, both thinking "more mysteries".<p>

"While you're at it, can you also check for a Giovanna Servente? She's supposed to be Downing's new alibi!"

Ryan gave a curt nod and strolled off to his desk once more and Beckett started to stare at the murder board again.

"You know, you'll only burn a whole in it…"

"Very funny, Castle. Got a better idea?"

"I…uhm…no." He fell silent and stared as well. Beckett let her eyes roam over the pictures, the suspects, the alibis, the motives. She stopped at the x-Ray pictures of the boy's broken bones. She had a gut feeling that if the case had nothing to do with the family story it must have to do with the kidnapping and she was determined to solve both crimes.

"Let's dig some more in the family history tonight, tomorrow we'll start digging again in the kidnapping. I'm sure there's something we've overlooked!" she said, half to herself, half to Castle.  
>"There must be something."<p>

He nodded his agreement. She was right, the kidnapping was too easily overlooked, there sure as hell had to be something. And he knew they could find it if they just looked hard enough.

What Castle had learned about police work over the last four years of his shadowing the detective was that most of the work was boring paperwork. Researching, looking through records, finding pieces of evidence through calling people, etc., etc. Fieldwork was only a small amount of what they had to do. He had come to accept that sometimes there really wasn't anything to do for him but to sit, watch and wait at the precinct. He knew Beckett had hated it at first, him watching her do paperwork. It was creepy, she had said. Now she was always glad that he was there to keep her company, bring her coffee and sometimes distract her from her work.

And it was back to paperwork for them once more now. Research was no problem for him, he was used to doing that from writing books back then when he didn't have a muse and he even now had to do some extra research now and then. That's why he tried to help the team as much as he could and sometimes he really enjoyed it like with the McClaren house. Sure, Beckett had not appreciated it too much but it had helped in the end.

So now he was helping with research again. He couldn't use the police computer since he didn't own one. Yes, it kind of annoyed him, he was sure he could be a lot more help if he was allowed to use one at all times but Captain Gates would never allow it! So he used his phone most of the time. There was always something to be found on the internet.

Beckett was making some more background checks on the Downing's. Mostly Mr Downing, his firm and his financials. Ryan was still working on Giovanna Servente and Melissa Payton and Esposito was doing god knows what. So Castle did the one thing he could think of, he googled both Giovanna and Melissa. The moment he had typed in Giovanna's name he realised why Beckett's mother's case was so present in his mind again. Giovanna, the Italian version of Johanna. He sighed and tried to let it go.

There were lots of Giovanna Servente's to be found on Google. Not surprising, in Italy it seemed to be a popular name. Finding the one Giovanna Servente in New York was hard since he didn't even know what the woman looked like and also here there were a few women called like that.

Melissa was a different matter. The Downing's were a well-known family but so were the Payton's and Melissa, she had been a rebel. Castle found several articles in magazine archives that showed her drunk or drugged, most of the time in company with men and in fights with her sister. Carrie had apparently always been the good one in the family and it didn't surprise him when he found an article about the fact that the sisters had had a public fight and were never seen together again. Melissa had by then gotten into the wrong people's hands, dealers and such and also spent some time in jail for drug possession. And then, all of a sudden there had been nothing more in the papers. She seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth when she was twenty eight and out of jail.

"The records are sealed." Ryan stood behind Castle and looked at Beckett. "I found Melissa's records but they are sealed."

"How come?" Beckett asked, irritated.

"I don't know, they just are. There's nothing I could look at…"

"I have something," Castle cut in. "She was a handful, there are a lot of articles about her around. Naked pictures and all included."

That got him a raised eyebrow from Beckett, of course, but he never meant it like this so he just looked at her with a not-like-that-look and went on.

"She even spent some time in jail and then, all of a sudden, there is nothing anymore."

"Can this family get any more mysterious?"

"Actually…it can…" Ryan said with a hesitant tone. "Giovanna Servente may not be a family member, but well…even if she were…she wouldn't be."

Castle and Beckett both looked at him as if he'd completely lost it. "English please, Ryan," Beckett said.

"She doesn't exist. There is no record of a Giovanna Servente anywhere. Apart from the fact that she works at Downing Corporations but that is all. I mean, there are a few women with the name but none of them fits the descriptions and none of them works at Downing Corporations."

"Then how did she get into the firm in the first place?" Castle asked curiously.

Beckett ran her fingers through her hair with closed eyes and it was obvious to Castle that she was very frustrated.

"Maybe we should call it a night," he suggested, "start fresh tomorrow."

"The questions will still be there tomorrow, it doesn't really matter…" she answered, eyes still closed.

"But you can go if you want, it's getting late." She meant what she said but there was also a slight plea in her voice to make him stay. She only had to think about him leaving for a while to already miss him. It was pathetic and she shook her head lightly at her own thoughts. She had just gotten so dependent on the guy but wasn't able to voice it.

"It's okay, I can stay."

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><p><em>And we're done for today xD Yes, yes, I know, it's a very weird case and I guess not all of it makes sense xD (not yet!)<em>

_I hope you enjoyed it and again, I promis you, the next one will be far far less case related! Far far less! =)_

_**Hit the review button ;)**_


	8. Chapter 7 Playground Encounters

**_A/N:_**_ Maaan, I just had the best weekend in a loooong time! Frankfurt was amazing and meeting up with other Castlefans that have become such good friends first online and now for real as well...that is quite something =) Maybe it's given me enough inspiration to write chapter8 in a few... I was kind of stuck before I left on Friday, wasn't satisfied at all...but enough with the ranting...Chapter8 isn't here ye, but chapter7 is and if I may say so myself, I _adore _this chapter! I had so much fun writing it and I think it's kinda perfect xDD _

_I do hope you'll love it as much as I do, so all that is left to say is: ENJOY! =)  
><em>

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><p><strong>Chapter 7<strong>

She was sitting on a bench, watching over the playground and keeping an eye out for the little boy. She had agreed to babysit her mother's friend's son and she was actually quite enjoying herself. The kid was cute and she was on half term holidays so there was nothing much to do for her since she had just broken up with her latest boyfriend.

There really wasn't any use of dating a French guy that was going back home in a few days. Madison had said she was crazy for breaking up with him but she just couldn't handle it. It was bad enough that everybody thought she was dating some royal guy but the evening before she'd broken up with him he said with his cute French accent "I need to tell you something, Katherine" and she had jumped up and said she needed to go home or her father would kill her. Sure, her father had long ago accepted that he couldn't control her and had thus given up on telling her to be home at certain times but the way François had talked to her, she feared there was something big coming and she really didn't need that.

She was eighteen, for crying out loud and not yet ready for anything serious. Poor François had his heart broken and she did feel a little bit bad about that but really, what could she have done? Once he would have said "Je t'aime" she would have had an even harder time breaking up with him. It was all for the best, she was sure of that.

"Timmy, be careful!" she called out when the five year old boy rudely pushed a little girl aside that was trying to climb the ladder for the chute. But the girl was feisty, got up from the sand and stood her ground.

"Don't. Push. Me!" she said angry but with such a sweet voice that it almost made Kate laugh. She had gotten up and was now walking towards the two children to see if they needed help.

"You were in my way!" Timothy hit back, arms folded in front of him. The girl was giving him an evil stare and now Kate really had to try hard not to laugh. The bright blue eyes just couldn't really look angry, even Timmy noticed.

"You're not scaring me…" he said and the redhead stomped her foot.

"I was here first!"

"No, you weren't! You just think because you're a girl, you can go first!"

The fight had attracted another adult who was slowly walking towards them.

"Lexi, everything okay there?" he asked and reached the children at the same time as Kate did.

"Daddy, he pushed me and now he says I was in his way but I was here first!"

The man looked at Kate, assuming she was the one responsible for the boy but she just shrugged her shoulders.  
>"I'm sorry, I have no idea who got here first. Timmy, why don't you two play together, that's way more fun than fighting."<p>

"But Katie…"

"No but's, you know what your mother told you."

The boy nodded, eyes fixed on the ground.

"You go first then…" he said to the redhead, not at all happy with the new arrangement but the girl smiled and with her head held a little higher than necessary she walked past him and climbed the ladder.

Kate grinned as she watched Timmy climb after her and saw the man next to her smiling too. He took out a camera and shot a picture of the girl and Kate noticed that the girl had inherited her father's blue eyes.

Something about the two of them seemed oddly familiar to her anyway but she couldn't place it. She smiled at the man, crossed her arms in front of her chest and watched the children play.

They stood there for a while, both just watching, the man sometimes taking pictures. The two children had completely forgotten about their row and were playing peacefully together. Or at least only teased each other without being serious.

Since Kate had almost spent the whole afternoon in the park with the boy she was slowly getting tired and it was still rather cold. Dusk was already settling in and she'd promised the boy's mother not to bring him home too late. And it really was getting cooler by the minute and she would have loved to swap her coat with the girl's sweet red and white jumper for warmth.

"When I watch them I sometimes wish I could be a child again, playing around like them with no worries at all that come with being an adult."

She was a little startled by the man's statement, she had not expected him to talk so she looked over and quickly eyed him up. He looked younger than she thought he would be but also in a way older. Like he had seen and experienced a lot. He was also quite handsome.

She slowly nodded. "I guess so…

"Timmy, sweetheart, your mom will be waiting soon, I think we should go."

The boy looked up from where he and the redhead were sitting and talking, got up and ran over. "But Katie, we're having so much fun! Lexi can tell some really good stories!" the five-year old said and made Kate laugh.

"I'm sure she can but you're mom really won't be too happy with me if I don't bring you home on time. Come on now, say goodbye."

Timothy did as he was told, ran over to the girl and said his goodbyes. Kate turned around to face the man.

"Thanks for letting them play together. Timothy can be a real handful on the playground, he doesn't really like to share…" she said and watched as a big smile spread across the man's face.

"No problem at all, it's nice for Lexi too, to have some company from time to time when normally there's only her old man around," he answered jokingly but Kate could hear sadness behind his voice that made her pity him a little.

"Hey, could you maybe do me a favour?" he now asked.

"Sure, what is it?"

"Could you take a picture of my daughter and me? My desk looks a little empty at the moment and I'd love one of the two of us together."

"I think I can do that," she said with a kind smile.

He handed her the camera and went over to his daughter while Kate tried to take a few pictures and waited till both of them were back with her, Timothy running around all three of them and then off onto the pathway next to the playground.

"Timmy, not so fast!" she called out and followed him. When she had caught up with him she realised she still had the man's camera in her hand and turned around to see him and his daughter walking towards them hand in hand.

"Stop!" she said, "turn around and walk towards the playground, I'll take another picture!"

The man, a little surprised at first, beamed at her and turned around, taking his daughter by his right hand. Kate smiled, brought the camera up to her eyes and took the shot. She sincerely hoped the picture would look as great as the real thing did, father and daughter walking hand in hand, looking at each other. The girl must love her father a lot.

She took Timothy by the hand and dragged him to his new friend and her father, handed the latter one his camera back and said her goodbyes.

He smiled at her. "Thank you so much. I won't keep you from bringing the boy back to his mother."

A slight laughter escaped her mouth and she said: "Don't worry, I'm still on time. Goodbye Lexi." She kneeled down to be on eyelevel with the girl that smiled broadly at her. "Bye," she answered, waving with her free hand and then nudged her new friend Timothy in the side and giggled. Kate grinned and got up again.

"Who knows, Timmy might have been right…maybe he wasn't the one who started it." Both adults laughed at that.

"I'll see you around," Kate said and with those words she gave a curt nod and left into the direction of the subway to bring Timmy home and then go home as well.

She could feel the eyes of the man and his daughter on her back but didn't turn around.

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><p>It was almost 5am and Castle was sitting at his desk. He had been trying to write since 3am because he hadn't been able to sleep any longer. But writing didn't always come that easy so instead he now had a picture of himself and his daughter of when she was four in his hand. It was a long time ago that he had looked at this picture, probably when he and Beckett had had that case with the killer nanny.<p>

He adored the photo and lately he hadn't been able to spend all that much time with his little girl. She was always out and about on some new or old internship and although he was happy for her he missed her. And this wasn't even college time yet.

He let out a sigh and threw a look at the clock. He couldn't go into the precinct yet although he was fairly certain that Beckett had once again crashed on the break room couch.

He'd stayed till 10pm last night and then Beckett had insisted he go home and get some rest. There was nothing left for him to do at the moment so he had agreed, reluctantly though but agreed nonetheless.

His throat was getting a little dry so he got up from his chair and walked to the kitchen to get himself a glass of water. When he came back into the study he turned the TV on, his own murder board with Beckett's face on it. He sometimes felt haunted by this murder board. He really didn't know what to make of the case, the mysterious Mr. Smith, the game of chess he liked to mention. It was confusing, frustrating and he just wanted it to be over.

He didn't even know how he could have kept it secret for so long, how he had managed to keep Beckett from digging deeper. He felt so guilty for doing it and he knew that even though he initially wanted to solve the case and then tell her he wouldn't be able to do that. It could take years to solve it and he couldn't hide it for years. It weighed on him so badly already he didn't even want to know what it would do to him in a few years.

As always he tried to find anything new on the people still alive, a connection to other people that were not yet on the board and as always he came up with nothing new. He sat at his computer for another hour and when he next looked at his watch it was 6.38am.

He sighed and went to his bedroom, grabbed new clothes and then took a shower. It only took him a few minutes and he was soon on his way to the precinct, getting coffee on the way.

At half past seven the elevator to the 4th floor dinged and he stepped out of it. He was early and there weren't many people around yet. He could see light in Captain Gate's office but there was no sign of either Beckett or the boys so he went to the interview room where he was sure to find Beckett asleep. And there she was, curled up on the couch, a smile on her face as if she had had a beautiful dream.

Castle watched her for a minute or two, saw the steady lift and fall of her chest and it hit him again how very glad he was for this. Since she had come to get him back on her team after the three months radio silence he had sometimes come in earlier than normal to find her sleeping on the same couch as now. The first time it was coincidence, then he tried to find her there more often, just happy to watch her, something she hadn't allowed him after her shooting.

He had felt so lost during that time and watching her now was like a drug to him that kept him alive. Every moment she was alive, he felt more alive too.

A smile spread on his face and he stepped closer to her, lifting the top of the coffee cup and waving the scent in her direction. She stirred and murmured his name. He looked at her a little surprised but then just smiled broader.

Her hand went up to her eyes, rubbing the sleep out of them and when she opened them he could see the surprise in them at seeing him in such close proximity but she smiled.

"Castle?" she breathed still a little sleepy.

"Morning sunshine." He couldn't resist and earned himself the first eye roll of the day.

"You should have gone home," he added and handed her the coffee that she gladly took. She sat up, made room for him to sit down next to her and sipped her coffee. She had again had one of those weird dreams but this time she knew better than to say anything to Castle. No need to make him curious when she wasn't yet sure herself where all those dreams were coming from and what they meant. She had never been one to believe in the power of dreams at least not in the way that others did. Sure, dreams were there to cope with stuff that the mind could not deal with otherwise and that it was to relieve the pressure of life but those dreams she had lately seemed to have much more significance than just relieving certain burdens.

She sighed and leaned back on the couch, her shoulder brushing Castles. Neither of them moved, they were far too comfortable in the others personal space.

"Was the late night at least worth something?" Castle asked but Kate just shook her head.

"Not really. I haven't found anything new but I managed to get a list of all the suspects and witnesses from the kidnapping case. We can start questioning them today."

They sat next to each other for a couple more minutes until Kate felt awake enough to get to work. She got up and waited for Castle to follow her. Together they stepped into the bull pen where both Ryan and Esposito had arrived in the short time that the other two had spent in the interview room.

"Morning boys," both Castle and Beckett greeted and sat down at Beckett's desk.

Espo came walking towards them. "I got hold of the leading Detective in the kidnapping case. He's coming by in about an hour."

"Oh, that's what you've been doing all evening and this morning?" Castle asked. "I thought you were just being lazy…"

This earned him an evil stare from Espo and an air-high-five from Ryan who was normally the one to be afflicted with those kinds of jokes.

Beckett hid a smile behind her hand and turned the monitor of her computer on, took the pile of files and divided them into two.

"Here you go." She handed on half to Esposito. "That's for you two, we'll check the rest."

He took the pile, raising an eyebrow all the while and then walked off to his desk again. The list wasn't really that long but the whole team knew it would become a very long day, finding the truth and the lies in all the people's statements. Also, considering that the kidnapping was six years ago, the possibility was big that most of what would be told, would probably be rather wrong and altered through time anyways. But they at least had to try, who knew what might come up.

At that moment Beckett's phone started ringing and she picked up. It was her friend from the morgue calling with news and she listened intently. She didn't say much so the boys didn't know what was going on. They waited patiently, all three of them looking at her from wherever they just sat in the bull pen.

Once she ended the phone call, Castle asked: "So? What does she have?"

"She consulted someone with better bone knowledge than her to confirm how old Matty's injuries were and confirmed that they fit into the time frame of his kidnapping. We need to find those bastards that kidnapped the boy."

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><p><em>Soooo, what did you think? Liked it as much as I liked writing it? I'll try to write chapter 8 in a few...I think I do have some ideas again xD <em>

_**Hit the review button** in the meantime and THANK YOU ALL for still reading! LOVE YOU!_


	9. Chapter 8 Making Sense

**A/N: **_Surprise, surprise, the girl managed to update her story...I'm sorry it took me so long but I really struggled with this one...and it kinda is just a filler in between chapters but I had to write something xD It's pushing the case a little further again. Luckily I already know what I want for chapter 9 and the ones who are not that interested in the case might be happier with the next one xDD_

_There's something else I have to say and that concernes future episodes. No matter what happens in them, I will stick to my plan of doing things. You might have noticed that i mention their secrets from time to time and yes, I do have plans for them but unlike in my other FF I will do it in my own way here that has been stuck in my head for ages ;D  
><em>

****_Thank you guys for reading, reviewing, sticking with me!_

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><p><strong>Chapter 8<strong>

On their way to the morgue to get the blood results they passed a playground and Beckett remembered flashes of her latest dream. This had been going on for a while now and she felt the need to get it off her chest and she knew just the person to talk to. Only they both had quite the tight schedule and it wasn't always easy to get together. She gazed at Castle for a second and thought about just telling him but she wasn't ready for that yet. Like the last time when she'd texted him she still wasn't sure what was real and what wasn't and until she had figured that out she wouldn't speak to him about it again. Also, if she did she would have to confront her own feelings about him. Of course, she was sure that she was utterly in love with the man but she had lied to him, she was _still_ lying to him about that particular day that made him confess his love. She hated to keep it secret that she knew but at the time it had been the right decision. For both of them. She knew how wrong it was and how selfish it seemed but she did it for both of them. She did it for herself because she wasn't sure if she was ready, if she trusted him enough to commit, if she trusted _herself_ enough to commit, if she knew enough about him to know this was going to be real. She did it for him because she was a complete wreck and she didn't want him having to deal with her, broken as she was. She did it for him because she knew that if just a small thing went wrong, she would retreat and that would hurt both their hearts. No, she was sure it had been the right decision back then. The problem was that now that she was getting there, slowly, but getting there, it felt all wrong. It felt like a betrayal to not only him but herself too. Hadn't she been in love with him long enough to try it? Hadn't she gotten to know him well enough to know it would be for real?

She knew that the reason she'd backed off again was that one summer after their second year together. Yes, it had been only a moment but it was enough to crush her again. She had really thought that she was ready, that _he_ was ready. And then, just when she'd summoned all her courage his ex-wife had shown up and taken him away from her, leaving her like a wounded dog.

Today she knew that she hadn't been ready back then either. Even less so than last summer when she got shot. And it hadn't been completely his fault back in 2010 either. After all, she kind of had been dating someone else.

She had to tell him this time. At some point at least. But she really didn't know how. Sometimes she suspected that he already knew and it would be just like him. He knew her so well, read her like a book and still he stayed. Kate had realised in the time since the shooting that Castle in fact was very committed to her. Maybe they weren't in such a kind of relationship yet but he had come back, he had endured all her relapses, all her little quirks and outbursts and just accepted her the way she was. He was for real and he was fighting for her in his very own way. She felt like she didn't deserve him.

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><p>Once they were in the morgue Lanie updated them on her latest findings. She had told most of it over the phone already but Beckett had wanted to come down anyways.<p>

"Okay, I have one weird thing about the blood stain," the ME said and waved the detective and the writer over to the computer. She opened the DNA fingerprint pictures and all of them looked at it.  
>"It's the same one?" Castle asked, "What's so special about it?"<p>

Lanie shook no and pointed to certain strands. "They are very similar, but look here, and here, and here…" She pointed out each difference with the tip of her pen and when she finished Beckett looked at her with a confused look.

"Siblings?" she asked and Lanie confirmed with a nod.

"But from what you have told me, the boy only has a sister. Well this is DNA from a male."

"You are saying that Matthew had another brother?"

"Yes, one with the same parents."

Beckett sighed, "And I thought it couldn't get any more complicated."

Castle all the while just stood there, staring at the screen in disbelief. He knew that – as so often – it was wrong of him to like this case but he did. He enjoyed it immensely because he just really wanted to know the story behind all this. But it didn't reduce his personal feelings toward the case. Yes, it was twisted, yes it was very complicated but yes, it also still managed to get to him because Matty had just been sixteen years old.

Before they left, Beckett asked her BFF if she had time for a talk anytime soon and to her surprise Lanie asked back if she was available later that day. Kate knew she'd be working long again if she didn't have anything else to do but she also knew that she needed a break so she agreed to meet the ME for dinner later on. She wasn't sure yet if she would tell her friend about her dreams, about anything really but she was looking forward to a girl's night anyways. They hadn't had one of those in quite a while, it was long overdue.

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><p>She and Castle were now again on their way back to the precinct. Lanie's news were rather huge but Beckett had told herself that she was going to dig into the kidnapping today and she wanted to stick to the plan.<p>

"Do you think the Downing's had another child that they didn't raise themselves?" Castle pulled her out of her thoughts.

She shrugged her shoulders. "I really couldn't say but to be honest, I don't really think so. There must be a different reason for this. Maybe Matthew wasn't their son at all…"

"Oh, what if Matthew has actually been kidnapped twice? What if the Downing's had wanted another child and abducted Matthew as a baby and the real parents have snatched him back later?"

"You know, it actually wouldn't surprise me… Nothing in this case can do that anymore."

He laughed at her but she just sighed. Beckett was glad that they had work waiting for them at the precinct, it kept her distracted from all the other things going on.

When they got there she first updated the murder board adding the unknown brother to it and a huge question mark behind both parents surprising the Ryan and Espo with the additional info. They could hardly believe what Castle told them about the new factor of the case and were almost as frustrated as Beckett by it.

After she updated the board she went back to working on the suspects and witnesses of the kidnapping case.

Castle helped her by going over the files again and pointing out every single thing that seemed odd to him. She was once again glad to have him around because she knew what a good memory he had. When the people would come for a chat he'd have no problem spotting the small differences in witness accounts and how right she was.

Matty's friends had never been suspects so Beckett called them all into the precinct together. When they arrived she immediately saw that they were confused. They had a guess why they were here, of course by now everyone in the city knew that the murdered kid had been Matty Downing, but they didn't really know what they could do to help.

They were led into the interview lounge by an officer and Beckett and Castle joined them a minute later. The four boys and three girls looked up from their seats and waited for the detective to say something.

Beckett checked her file and looked at each teenager. They were all between fourteen and seventeen and had been rather young when Matty disappeared. The youngest of them was Summer Stevens. The girl had only recently turned fourteen, the oldest one was Benjamin Clark.

Castle and Beckett sat down opposite of the seven young adults and started talking about the day that Matty disappeared.

One of the boys, Thomas, who was built like the typical football player with his broad shoulders, spoke up first.

"There really isn't much to say," he began, indicating that there was probably more to tell than any of them let on. He continued in his already very deep voice, "We were playing in the park, it was the spot where our nannies liked to meet up, also most of our parents knew each other and were happy when we played there. It's a save playground, nothing unusual."

Beckett nodded. "But Matthew wasn't snatched from the playground, he separated from the group and never came back."

They all nodded their agreement except for one girl. She sat at one end of the couch and it seemed that she didn't really belong to the group anymore. Beckett checked her file again and then looked at the girl. "Eleanore?" she asked simply and the brown haired girl looked up, startled.

"I…" she said and met the gazes of her six friends. They all stared at her, some with a raised eyebrow, some just questioningly. None of it escaped the Detective's attention.

"Please continue the story, Eleanore," she said, giving the others a look that made them study the floor.

The girl sighed and looked at Beckett. "Detective, we were just kids, playing around back then. We didn't think anything would happen…"

"Shut it, Ella," the boy named Ethan said through clenched teeth.

"No, you shut it!" Summer cut in, throwing an evil eye at Ethan. "Go on, Ella, tell her…"

Ella nodded, glad that she got support from at least one of the others. "We were playing around, first it was just a game of tag, then it changed to hide and seek and well, then to cops and robbers. Matty was one of the robbers…he hated being one of the robbers cause he was always too scared to get out of his hiding place to rescue the others and he was too scared to get caught as well so he hid for like forever. We made fun of him because of it because whenever he was one of the robbers, the cops would always win. They stood no chance because he had to come out sometime and we would always find him. If not, then we had only to wait for his sister and she would call him. He didn't want her to get mad so he came out and the cops won the game…"

"That's not in any of the reports…" Castle stated and looked at the teenagers. They still didn't really dare to look up from the floor.

"We were kids…" Zach then said. "We knew that something was wrong the next day but what we said back then, that we thought Matty had just gone home, that was true. We really believed that."

They all agreed with that and Scarlett added, "He was like that sometimes. And Ella just told you, he hated being one of the robbers so he sometimes escaped. We really thought he'd done it again. And we couldn't be bothered, Nicole had left him with us but we were not responsible for him."

"He was a know-it-all! He deserved to be one of the robbers from time to time to realise that he wasn't better at everything."

"Taylor!" Eleanore exclaimed. "How can you say that? Matty was nice to all of us, he always helped us with everything. It wasn't his fault that you are this stupid!"

Castle watched the fight between the evolved among teenagers and was absolutely fascinated by it. When the seven had come in first he'd thought they were a pretty good group of friends but it didn't seem like that at all, now that they were talking. There was a lot going on behind the scenes and it made him wonder what exactly it was.

The teenagers were close to getting up and get into a physical fight, the tension in the room was extremely high and Beckett was close to separating them all but she needed some more answers first.

"Okay, so what does the game have to do with Matthew's disappearance?" she asked and brought them all back on track.

"We said no one goes any further than the path next to the playground. Of course it's not as much fun to play on a small field but our nannies would have killed us had we gone further. When we couldn't find Matty – and we all looked together – we assumed that he had gone home again because he didn't want to be the reason for the robbers losing the game again. We never thought that he might have gone off to find a better hiding place and then got snatched off or something…" the girl Summer explained. Beckett almost thought she could hear the eight year old in Summer's voice from the day when Matty went missing and felt a bit sorry for her.

She nodded at her and said thank you.

The others sat there, not knowing what to do or what to say. They were scared that what they had hidden back then might have consequences but the truth was that even if they had told the truth before it probably wouldn't have changed anything. The police would probably have gotten involved a bit sooner but from what Beckett had learned about the case in the past days was that the kidnapping had been long planned and that so well that no one would have seen anything different than they did.

* * *

><p>After talking to the kids a little while longer Beckett let the seven go home. She had found out everything that she'd wanted to and even some more. With a few questions, the oldest – Benjamin – managed to remember a few things from before the day. He'd said that in the days before the kidnapping there had been a boy hanging around the playground that normally wasn't there. It wasn't unusual for new kids to show up of course but he said that the boy had been at least fifteen or sixteen and that was absolutely not what you would expect from a kid that age, hanging around the playground. Benjamin also mentioned that that boy had attempted to talk to Matty without success, he'd been brought up well enough to not just talk to anyone or go with anyone. Another reason for Beckett to believe that there was something off with the kidnapping.<p>

Ryan and Esposito had talked to the leading detective from back then and filled her and Castle in on their news. Detective Carson told them that the investigation had only started when the letter was delivered to the Downing's but that there was never much to go on. They had the police search the park with dogs in case that something else had happened but they couldn't find anything. Matty hadn't dropped anything that gave them a hint nor had his kidnapper. Some witnesses said that they'd seen a boy that looked like Matty walking alone in the park but no one had seen if he got snatched. Carson had said that he'd been the one to call off the search after a while because there was neither proof of life nor a ransom call and they just couldn't do anything. They had absolutely no hints whatsoever and the question arose if maybe the boy hadn't just run off.

When Beckett asked why Detective Carson had assumed this, the boys shrugged their shoulders. They said he couldn't say, he said it was a gut feeling but this stroke Beckett and also Castle as weird since they both had exactly the opposite feeling. It was obvious for both of them that Matthew _had_ been kidnapped, even if the family seemed like the strangest one in centuries and there might have been reasons to run away.

Beckett frowned. She hated when other Detectives were being sloppy in their work and to her it appeared like this Detective Carson had thought there were more important things to be done than finding the little boy. She really didn't get it but it did seem so.

Her team then started to dig in witness accounts again, look for discrepancies between each, call some witnesses again to see if they still told the same and Castle did spot all the small details just as Beckett had thought. He noticed that some of the witnesses had seen a boy wandering around and other had seen a boy clearly looking for something, the question was what.

"Beckett?"

"Yes?"

"I think I might have found something."

Beckett looked up from the file she was working on and raised an eyebrow at Castle who was making a dramatic pause but gave in when he saw her look. He got up, placed the folder in front of her and leaned closer, making Beckett tense a little but only to hide the shiver that was threatening to go through her body by his close proximity.

"See here?" he asked and pointed at a sentence in an older ladies statement, accidentally brushing her shoulder by doing so. "She said that a boy approached her, asking if she'd seen a German Shepard strolling around alone in the park."

"So?" She looked up at him, questioningly. Of course she could have read it herself but as a start she knew how much he liked to tell her what he found out – yes, he was like a puppy that needed some reassurance sometimes – and also, she enjoyed listening to him being all proud of having found something.

"So…? So she saw him walking to a teenage boy after she'd told him that she hadn't seen a dog. She saw them exchange some words and then take off again into different directions."

"Well, if it in fact was Matty, then it might help, but they went separate ways so probably he was just asking the boy the same question as the woman."

"Beckett, tell me you don't get one of your gut feelings hearing all this. Remember what Benjamin said about the teenage boy hanging around the park trying to talk to Matty? What if it was the same boy and what if that boy was the one kidnapping Matty. What if he managed to lure Matty into talking to him by saying he'd lost his dog and Matty, being kind hearted like everyone said, believed him and offered to help find the dog. It's the perfect plan. Fool proof and so cliché that no one would believe it!"

"And who says it really was Matty? I mean, all those witnesses say they saw a blond boy walking around alone in the park but I bet he wasn't the only blond boy. What if another one was just racing off from his mother or his nanny or running from one parent to the other in a game?

I'm not saying your theory is wrong, it actually does sound rather plausible but we can't know for sure."

She threw a quick glance at the file, checking to see if the police had shown the woman a picture and she saw that they did but it also said that the lady couldn't ID Matty for sure, she said she had a bad memory when it came to faces.

The "ding" of the elevator brought her back from her thoughts of how to prove that this in fact had been Matty and when she looked up a woman came walking up towards her. She seemed to be in her mid-forties but she could have been older as well. She had her blond hair with a lot of grey streaks in them hanging in strands over her shoulders. Her whole appearance didn't look very neat but something about her features seemed familiar to Castle but he couldn't yet say what it was.

"Are you Detective Beckett?" the woman asked in a hoarse voice, clearly damaged from a life of smoking, as she approached Beckett's desk.

The Detective nodded. "And who are you?" she asked back.

The woman threw a glance at the murder board behind Beckett and let her gaze halt for a few seconds longer on some pictures until she found the one she was looking for, right in the middle. That's when Castle realised what looked so familiar but before he could completely form his thought, the woman answered.

"I am his mother" she said and nodded at Matthew Downing's picture.

* * *

><p><em>Wohoo, surprise again xD Well, not all of you I guess but the question still remains who she is ;) And is she even telling the truth? ;D<em>

_Again, appologies for not so many Caskett moments but I promised myself to write an FF with a good case as well and I want to keep that promise =)_

_If you are in need for Caskett goodness, read my other FF's, you might enjoy them xD_

**_Or just hit the review button to leave me a comment =)_**

xx


	10. Chapter 9 Confessions

_**A/N: **Try again...Sorry, I got annoyed by the alert issues...xD_

_I'm still pretty shaken from 47 seconds... I can't freakin wait for next Monday but well, in the meantime I try to keep myself busy with writing this story and my bachelor dissertation... (emphasis on *try* xD) _

_I am pretty much spoilerfree for Monday and I'm so glad I managed it again xD soooo hard these days, especially on FB and Twitter...seriously, ths spoilers on my TL, thank god I have my list =) Well, as I said before, no matter what happens in the next few epis, this story will continue the way I planned it, even if all secrets come out on the show or not, I will stick to my way here. I know I got influeneced a little by last Mondays epi while writing this chapter but I think it still works. _

_Now, first case, then something else, I hope you'll like it. _

_Thanks again for reading._

_**Disclaimer:** I still don't own the characters... Well, at least not the main ones, the Downings are my ones xD_

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 9<strong>

Beckett stared at the woman and only heard Ryan and Esposito approach. Both of them had heard the woman's confession and were just as astounded as Beckett and Castle.

"Come again?" Beckett asked when she finally found her voice again.

"I am his birth mother…" the woman said again.

"I think we got that…" Castle exclaimed, "what we still don't know is who you are."

The woman nodded and Beckett noticed how tired she looked and got up.

"Please follow me, we can talk in there," she said, pointing to the interview room and both Castle and the woman followed her. Even Ryan and Esposito mad an attempt of following but Beckett waved them off with a shake of her hand, knowing fully well, that it was less likely to get anything out of this woman if not just two but four people were listening to her.

She closed the door behind her and offered the woman a seat that she gratefully took. Both Castle and Beckett now noticed that the woman not only looked tired but that there was a nervous glint in her eyes, like a deer that was knew a fox was after it but didn't know where the enemy was. The woman sat pretty much on the edge of her seat, ready to run.

"Okay, from the start again," Beckett said in a calm voice and the woman nodded.

"My name is Tracy Alden. Only…you probably know me as Melissa Payton."

Castle and Beckett who had both looked at each other with a shrug at hearing the first name but as soon as she said Marissa both almost did a double turn in their seats.

"Melissa Payton? _The_ Melissa Payton? Sister of Carrie Downing-Payton? Who disappeared from the face of the earth ears ago?"

The woman nodded. "Yes, that one."

The detective shared another confused look with the writer before focusing on the task at hand again.

"And you are saying that you are Matthew's birthmother?"

Again Melissa nodded.

"Would you care to explain?"

Again, just a nod. Beckett waited patiently for Melisa to say something.

"I…You have to promise me that you will try to keep this quiet, keep me out of anything public. If he finds me I am dead. I am already a dead woman walking."

"Who is he?"

"That doesn't matter…He just can't find out!"

"We can protect you," Castle tried to reassure her but she shook her head no.

"Don't you understand. I told you my name was Tracy Alden. I am not even supposed to be here. I'm throwing myself into the line of fire. I've never done a decent thing in my life except for giving Matthew to my sister. I've never done anything for either of my boys. I can't rescue either of them anymore but I can help Matthew find peace. That's why I'm here. But no one can know! I am supposed to be in Witsec!"

Melissa sounded so desperate and the mention of Witness protection showed Beckett that the woman was serious so she gave in and gave a curt nod.

"I'll see what I can do."

Melissa looked at her, gratefully and then she began her story.

"You have probably seen my records," she said matter-of-factly, "You must know that I've been in jail. Well, the thing that probably isn't in the records is that I gave birth there. It was my first son, Connor. I couldn't raise him in prison, that just wasn't an option. Carissa and I had already broken all contact and my parents didn't even want to talk about me anymore let alone with me. I didn't know what to do but the choice was taken from me anyway. I got a visit from a man one day. He told the warden that he was the father of my son and that he wanted to take him with him to raise him until I got out. His records were checked, they were clean and well, it seemed like the best way to get my son out of prison life. But I didn't want to do it. I knew that this man was one of _his_ men. I'll call him Chris, which isn't his name. Chris was the reason I was in prison, he was the reason I got knocked up and I didn't want Connor to live with him but I had no choice. They would've found a way anyway so I gave that man who pretended to be Connor's father my son, knowing he would grow up with his real father but also with violence, gang wars, drug lords and all this kinds of scumbags. So after I got back on my feet I did the one thing I could do. I made a deal. I traded information on the gang for my early freedom. But I didn't know what came with it, that basically I didn't have any freedom anymore from that moment on. My statement made it possible to raid some of the places and a few gang members were busted, I think even Chris got to do some time. I don't really know. I had to enter Witsec the moment I got out. Chris's men would have killed me for betraying them. I was sent to Europe, France to be exact. I managed to somewhat build a new live. I was Claire then and I had met someone I thought I could spend the rest of my life with."

She sighed, remembering the time where she'd actually been able to live and missed the look that Beckett gave Castle. It was full of longing but he didn't see it either, he was too intrigued by Melissa's story.

"Well, it ended. Pretty quickly," she continued. "Chris found me. To this day I do not know how and to this day I hardly know how I managed to get out of the situation. He is a cruel, cruel man with no compassion at all. He held me hostage, raped me, made me do things that still haunt me in my dreams. Somehow I escaped. I managed to find a way out, went straight to the police and called the Federal Marshal who was responsible for my case. He set up a new identity for me, sent me to England and well…into a nunnery. Just as a visitor though. The nunnery was also home to one of the best private medical clinics and when I realised that that son of a bitch had knocked me up again I knew that there was only one thing for me to do.

The clinic being in a nunnery though, I wasn't allowed to have an abortion. So I did the only other thing I could. I contacted my sister. I had to do it through the Marshall 'cause anything else would probably have failed and alerted Chris again. To my utter astonishment, Carrie came to England with the whole family. She told me that she just had a miscarriage and was ready to take my child as her own. It was all I needed and I thought the story would end there. Matty was born, my sister and her family took him back to the states and I lived in Witsec again, not knowing that somehow Chris had found out about my pregnancy and was looking for the child.

The rest I don't know for certain but I'm quite sure that it was him who took my son."

With this she stopped, looked at the detective first, than the writer, not sure whether it was a good idea or not to tell them.

Castle looked at Beckett. This, if it was true, was their best lead yet. It basically explained everything, it made sense and if they could only find some real proof, the case could move forward pretty quickly. For some reason though both didn't think it'd be this easy.

Beckett thanked Melissa for her cooperation but the woman gave a wave of the hand, saying it was the least she could do. She also said again that she didn't want anyone to know about this, especially not her sister. Carrie had taken her son with her to raise him but as soon as he had him the contact had broken off again.

Beckett reassured her again that she would try her best.

"Do you have a safe place to go?" she then asked and Melissa nodded.

"I'm in a Witsec house. They're not thrilled that I'm back in the states but I just had to come."

She was then escorted to the elevator by Beckett and Castle.

"Thank you again. How can we reach you in case there is something else?"

"Contact the Federal Marshals Office, they'll contact me."

Beckett nodded and gave her her card in return. "In case you need help or want to tell us something else."

With this Melissa got into the elevator and Beckett turned to debrief her team.

* * *

><p>"I'm telling you, it's so frustrating!"<p>

She was sitting opposite her best friend over dinner now and had just told her about the newest development in the case. They had worked on finding anything on the man Melissa had called Chris for the rest of the afternoon and at 6 o'clock Beckett had said she didn't want to cancel her dinner with Lanie. She'd told the boys to find out as much as they could, call the prison where Melissa did her time, talk to the Federal Marshals Office in case they knew something, basically just dig as deep as they could. Not that she had to tell them, they were already on it but she couldn't leave not knowing that she'd given them a task.

"Don't work on it too long though, we all need a break," she'd said and smiled at Castle before she left.

"Can we stop talking about the case now?" her friend asked and Kate rolled her eyes.

Why had she wanted to have dinner with Lanie again? She should've known that the ME would figure out that it was about more than just catching up on girl talk.

"Fine," she gave in, "let's talk about you and Javi."

Lanie looked at her, eyes open wide. "There's nothing to tell!" she exclaimed indignantly but Kate laughed.

"Yeah right. You can't hide anything from me, you should know that by now. So tell me, what's going on?"

"Nuh-uh, you go first, girl. Like you can hide anything from me. What's going on with you and writer-boy?"

Kate blushed lightly although there was really still nothing more than before but it was the reason she wanted to meet Lanie after all. Still, she denied it.

"Lanie, we're just partners!"

"Suuuure. How long have the two of you been working together now? Geez, Kate, do something, it's driving me crazy watching the two of you dance around each other all the time and not taking it any further!"

"Lanie!"

"Come on, you can't still deny that you care about him."

"I don't. I mean deny it. But this is not why I wanted to catch up with you…"

Change of subject, at least a little bit. That's what she needed now. This conversation was going into dangerous territory far too fast.

Lanie raised an eyebrow at her friend. She knew exactly what Kate was doing but she'd have enough time to persuade her to finally open up to Castle later.

"Fine. What is it that you wanted to talk about?" she sighed.

Kate didn't respond for a while, taking a few bites of her meal. She didn't quite know how to start this. It just really was too weird.

"Do you ever remember your dreams?" she finally asked. Start the subject slowly. Establish a story. It's what she did best. Well no, she was best at detecting, Castle was the one establishing the stories that went with what she finds but she's learned a few things from her writer in the past years too.

Again, Lanie raised an eyebrow. "Sometimes."

She said it more like a question, not getting where this was going.

"And do you think they have any significance?"

"Again…Sometimes? Why on earth are you asking me about dreams? I thought this was more serious…"  
>"It is! I…God, I have no idea what's going on with me, Lanie.<p>

I never remember my dreams but lately I've had weird ones. Like really weird. Castle was in them."  
>"Oh, now we're talking!"<p>

"Not like that…"

"Uh-huh…"

"Lanie, I don't remember what they were about…Not really anyways."

"Girl, I don't think every dream has significance but come on, are you seriously asking me if you dreaming about Castle has any significance? Isn't it obvious?"

Kate sighed, they were back at this point way faster than she'd thought they would.

"It's not what I meant. Let's start again. I've been having strange dreams. Ever since I got shot. I know that some of them are returning all the time but I can't remember what they were about. I only get bits and pieces. It's like I remember things…weird things…"

"From the shooting too?" Lanie interrupted and Kate blushed. She still hadn't told Lanie that she never forgot. Maybe that was the right time to do so and before she could think too much about the consequences she shook her head no at Lanie's question.

"No. Not about the shooting. I don't have to. Lanie…" she paused, still a little unsure. "I…Please don't judge me, okay."

The way her friend said this made Lanie worried. What horrible thing could Kate tell her that would make her beg for her not to judge? It wasn't really like her.

"Go on…"

"I…I never forgot. How could I."

Lanie looked at her, speechless. The info needed to sink in first and it was a hard thing to process. Had her best friend just told her that she remembered the shooting? That she'd remembered all along? Of course Lanie didn't know yet what Kate had actually hidden by telling she didn't remember but this was big news anyways. She hadn't trusted her with something like this for almost a year. Lanie really asked herself what was going on now. After they sat in silence for a while, Kate watching her friend worriedly, waiting for her to say something, Lanie opened her mouth. Then closed it again, still not quite ready.

"You…you remembered? You never forgot about that day?" she finally asked.

Beckett shook her head. "Never."

"Why? Why did you tell everyone that you don't remember?"

"Because I heard something that day that I wasn't ready for," she said in almost a whisper and the way she said it made Lanie stare at her. She felt that this was big. Huge even.

"Kate? What was it?"

"Castle," she just said.

"Castle what?"

"He…He told me something. No, confessed is the better word."

Lanie took a sip from her drink, waiting for Kate to spit it out. She did have something in mind of course but she didn't want to believe that this was it because if it was she was going to kill her friend.

Kate realised that Lanie wasn't going to say something, that she was going to wait for her to say it and so she did.

"Lanie…he said it…He told me he loved me while I was lying on the ground, bleeding."

It was a whisper again but Lanie heard it. It almost made her spill her drink. It was as bad as she'd thought.

"Kate, are you kidding me? He confessed his love to you, you remembered all this time and didn't say anything, pretended to not remember?" she said pretty loud so that a few other people in the restaurant looked up from their tables and threw her some nasty or interested glances.

"Keep it down, please…"

"Keep it down? Girl, do you even realise what this means? He loves you!"

"I know."

"What about you?"

"Do you even need to ask?"

It was the first time she admitted it to Lanie. Well, to anybody except her therapist for that matter.

"No, I don't really. But why did you hide it from him then?"

"Lanie, I was with Josh at the time. I…I didn't think Castle and I would have a chance anyway. He had been with Gina after the summer, he pretty much broke my heart back then. I knew I shouldn't get too deeply involved with him, shouldn't enjoy his company as much as I did but I thought giving it a try might work. I wanted to but it ended the way I thought it would. Badly. He left to the Hamptons with his ex and left me wondering if he could ever be an honest man.

He may have been speaking from his heart when I was lying on the ground but maybe he was just saying it because I was dying and he thought it was the right thing to say. I don't want it to be forced by something like this."

"Kate, stop it, right now. He loves you, every blind man can see that. He's followed you around for longer than necessary, he stays with you, he's there for you, all the time."

"I know. It's just. I wasn't ready. I couldn't handle it. It scared me, still does. What am I supposed to do?"

It was quite something for the self-assured detective to ask her friend for help, for reassurance. She always knew what to do, she was the strongest person Lanie had ever met and yet when it came to matters of love she seemed more lost than anybody else.

"Tell him."

"But, what do I tell him. I don't even know if I can."

"For goodness sake, just do it Kate. You're standing in the way of your own happiness."

Kate shook her head. "I'm damaged goods. We both know this. I'm not good for him. I don't want him having to deal with me the way I am, broken and all."

Lanie sighed heavily. "Did you hear what I just said before? He sticks around, he's done that for years now. Do you really think he can't put up with you? He knows who you are and he loves you despite of it, probably even because of it!"

"It's still complicated. He'll hate me for hiding from him that I knew, that I remembered. He'll think I don't care about him."

"No, he won't. I'm sure he'll be hurt but he deserves to know. And Kate, it'd be worse if he found out himself!"

"He won't."

"You can't be sure of that."

"You won't tell him."

"Of course I won't. He still might find out by himself."

"You really think I should do it?"

"Hell yes, I don't know what you're waiting for, what you _have been_ waiting for."

"The right moment? I still don't think I'm ready…And those dreams, they confuse me even more."

"Tell me about them."

"I can't. I don't remember them that well." Kate sighed and the two women ate in silence for a while, one waiting for the other to speak, the other waiting for the right words to come. Finally she decided to just give it a try.

"They seem like dreams but also like memories. You know what I mean?"

Lanie first shook her head, then nodded. "I guess. Kinda."

Kate, knowing exactly what Lanie meant, went on. "You know how sometimes the question comes up whether someone dreams in black and white or colour, if you can hear sound or if everything is mute, if you are a bystander that watches from above or are in the middle of the dream? Well, for me it is like being in the middle of it but also being a bystander. I see myself in the dreams first, but then I am in the dream but not as myself as I am now. As myself in earlier times. The first time I had a dream like this was in the hospital. I can't really remember, I think I wasn't in surgery yet. I couldn't feel anything anymore and I don't even think I was asleep, I was just unconscious. I had one of those out of body experiences I think and then the "dream" started. I saw myself and my grandfather in the magic shop. Do you remember that case? Zalmon Drake?"

Lanie confirmed with a nod and Kate went on. "I dreamed or saw or whatever it was that I was thirteen years old again and in the shop with my grandfather and I met Castle there."

Lanie almost chocked again. "You did what? Are you saying that you two have met before he started following you around?"

"That's what I don't know, Lanie. I mean, Castle told me during that case that he's always loved going to the shop when he was younger. I told him that I went there too. It probably was just my mind playing tricks on me, a wishful thinking of an earlier meeting. It is the only dream or memory that I actually remember, all the others I had and still have are a blur."

"What do you remember from the other ones?"

"Rick and his family. Me talking to them, Alexis being a totally adorable little kid that seems to like me every time…"

"Kate, maybe it is just fate telling you something."

This made Beckett laugh. "Yeah right, what kind of twist would that be?"

"Easy, a twist of fate," Lanie gave back with a wink.

The two women laughed and ate in silence again for a couple of minutes.

"Are you going to tell him?"

"What? That I remember or the dreams?"

"Both?"

"I don't know Lanie. I can't wrap my head around the dreams. I don't know what good it would do. I got shot after all, it might just be an aftermath, some kind of trauma. Instead of the amnesia… And about that… I think I need to find the right moment and I can't see this one coming any time soon." When she saw the look on Lanie's face she hurried to add that she promised to do it at some point, only half satisfying her friend.

"You know I won't give you a quiet minute until I know you've told him."

"I know," Kate answered with a chuckle. "Thanks Lanie. I know you don't quite agree with my choices but thanks for listening and helping me."

Her friend smiled and nodded. "Note a problem at all."

They spent the rest of the evening talking about lighter things, Kate questioning Lanie about her relationship with Esposito again. She'd noticed some little things going on between the two again. For one they had stopped arguing or worse, ignoring each other. Lanie grinned sheepishly, knowing she wasn't able to hide it from Kate. But she emphasised that it wasn't anything serious, that they were just having some fun and that they would see where it was going. No pressure, no relationship, no boundaries. That's what they needed at the moment.

Kate sincerely hoped that it would work out. Lanie and Javi were made for each other, she was sure of that. Now she only had to be sure about one other thing and that was that she and Castle belonged together too. That she wasn't bad for him but she wasn't ready to believe that yet.

* * *

><p><em>Well, this went a slightly different way then I originally intended...<em>_But I think I like how it turned out, I hope you do too ;D _

_And yes, some of you guessed right about Matty's real mother =)  
><em>

_**Hit the review button** and tell me what you think._

xx


	11. Chapter 10 To Kate

_**A/N:** I swear, I get the best chapters done when I'm supposed to do something else...I seriously have to get my priorities straight, considering my bachelor dissertation is due in three weeks...and I actually want to be done with it by next Monday... xDD Well, never mind, ignore my ranting._

_Here a little treat for you before tonight's episode that I can seriously not wait for! I am sooo excited, especially since I'm finally more spoilerfree again! =) _

_Once again, thanks for reading, subscribing, reviewing, whatever else you do! Sorry for the last update problem...I hate when doesn't send out alerts...-.-" Well, anyway, I hope you all still sticking with me =)_

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><p><strong>Chapter 10<strong>

Somehow she knew she'd fall right into one of those dreams or memories that she'd just told Lanie about. She was terribly tired, exhausted, running on the last bit of battery. The case was using every last bit of her energy and not even the normal adrenalin highs she gets from solving crimes was able to help her. She was so drained that she was out as soon as she hit the mattress.

When she opened her eyes she looked right into her mother's eyes, seeing her own reflection in them.

"I'm sorry, Katie, it won't take long, I promise," Johanna Beckett said to her daughter and the teenager nodded. She knew only too well that it would take a while for her mother to find the books that she wanted in the huge public library, let alone write everything down she needed.

They'd wanted a mother-daughter day out but as always a case had to thwart their plans. Kate admired her mother for her passion but she'd really been looking forward to this day.

She sighed. "It's okay, mom, I'll find something to do, don't worry."

Her mother nodded thankfully and went off into the direction of the legal section. Kate was very much interested in all things law herself, her parents both being lawyers made it easy for her to like it. She saw what her parents could do and she'd decided to go in the same direction. She had just applied to Stanford for Pre-Law and was impatiently waiting for their reply. It wasn't her only option of course, she had plenty other things covered in case she didn't get into Stanford but no one doubted that she would get a place. She was pretty much a model student. Of course, she did have her wild side. She and her best friend Maddy always got into some kind of trouble but that didn't change the fact that she managed to haver good marks, the best, most of the time.

Today she wasn't in the mood for anything law related though. She'd wanted a day to relax, enjoy it with her mother and because that wasn't possible now she went to the section with the fiction books. She could see that there was something going on that day, the people from the library were setting things up for a book reading but Kate had been here during several of those and was never bothered too much. She'd gotten up from her favourite spot on a window sill once or twice to have a copy of that author's book singed, if she knew it or not. She read a lot, so she always got to read the books she didn't yet know as well.

She roamed the rows upon rows of books, looking for a book now that would catch her interest. The only one that made her look twice was actually the book that was being advertised for the book reading. "Flowers For Your Grave", she read out half loud and turned it to read the blurb.

"_Four murders in and the NYPD are still desperate for a lead on the serial killer that the tabloids are calling 'The Florist.' Struggling journalist Leroy Fine knows if he cracked this story he could get back everything he's lost – his job, his wife, his self-respect. So when Leroy uncovers a piece of evidence the cops have overlooked, he begins his own private investigation into the twisted and deadly world of The Florist. But as Leroy gets closer to discovering the killer's identity, he soon realizes he's put himself and everyone he loves in mortal danger. Now Leroy must decipher the Florist's riddles and unmask his identity… or end up the latest flower-covered corpse on the Ledger's front page."_

It sounded interesting enough for her to pick it up and carry it to her spot on the windowsill. On the way she quickly passed through another row of books, picking up Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" in case she didn't like "Flowers For Your Grave" too much. She'd read Austen several times already but still loved it. However, she decided to really try this other book. The author's name kind of ringed a bell and she thought she remembered having seen some of his earlier work on her mother's night stand and being interested in it but her mother took forever to finish her books so she hadn't gotten to it yet. Curiously she started to read.

Once Kate started, she got pulled in. Everything around her disappeared and she was lost in the story. She didn't hear the people arriving, hustling past her place, she was so absorbed. Only once she reached the end of another chapter did she realise the commotion in the usually quiet library. She checked the page number she was on and was surprised at how far she'd already gotten, then she looked up to see what was going on. Apparently the book reading was about to start, the people were slowly settling down and then the author was introduced. Kate couldn't see anything from her place but she heard everything and after a few words and the one or other question Richard Castle was asked to read from the book. And so he did. Kate hadn't gotten to the part yet that he was reading but she was never patient enough to wait, so she didn't mind listening. And although she had heard him answer some questions she wasn't prepared for what came. When he started the first sentence she was immediately spellbound. His voice took on a totally different level, she got reeled in, and if she ever thought that reading a book was making her dive into a different world, seeing and living with the characters it was nothing compared to how she felt right now. His voice found its way right into her heart and from that moment on she knew she would love his books forever not knowing how right she would be with this thought a couple of years later.

She closed her eyes, shut everything out and just listened. It was soothing to hear, it mad the suspense in the story arch even bigger, the characters even more real. The places took shape in her mind, she felt the danger in her bones more than ever before and she wished it would never end. But end it did. When his voice subsided the room was quiet, she could feel the air sizzling. She realised that she was probably not the only one who had been mesmerized by the author's voice. Only very slowly did everyone come out of their trance, applauding and standing up. Kate couldn't see the turmoil but she heard the shuffling of chairs and feet. She smiled and buried her head in her library copy of the book but although she still liked it, she would have enjoyed it much more if Richard Castle had read it to her. She shook her head at her own thoughts and tried to concentrate on the story again. She wasn't as absorbed as before, heard the people move around and talk to each other, trying to reach Mr Castle and she thought about getting up herself for him to sign a book but she remembered that this was a library book so she just stayed put. She didn't realise when the author himself walked towards her. He didn't have the intention to walk to her, it was just the direction he had to go for a toilet break but when he spotted the young girl on the windowsill, absorbed in his book, he smiled.

"Got an interesting book there?" he asked when he was close enough.

Kate slowly looked up, half finishing the last sentence. She didn't realise at first who it was that was talking to her, so she nodded politely. "Quite good, yes."

Then she looked closer, realising that the man looked familiar. She turned the book in her hand and recognised who was standing in front of her.

"Oh. You're the author!" she said, blushing a little.

He smiled. "I guess I am. Well, I won't disturb you any further, you seemed quite absorbed in the story."

"Uhm, I guess I was. I do quite enjoy it."

"I could sign it to you, if you want to," he said with a wink and she threw him a look of confusion. Was this guy just flirting with her? She knew she looked a little older than she was but he was at least five years older, probably more. She couldn't deny that he looked rather handsome but still. She tried to laugh it off and then pointed with the book to the rows of books.

"It's a library book. I only just found it today."

"So I guess you are my newest reader today."

"Might be." She grinned and opened the book again, hinting that she wanted to continue reading.

"Well, enjoy some more then, new reader," he said and with a nod of the head disappeared into the direction of the rest rooms.

She noticed him coming back, disappear behind the shelves and then coming back to her with something in his hand. Hastily she buried her head in the book again, waiting to see if he actually was walking towards her again. He cleared his throat when he was close and she looked up again.

"Here, a little present for you" he said, holding out a book, no, his book, to her. "So you won't run out of reading material."

"I could've just borrowed this one from the library," she gave back seriously but then broke into a grin. "I guess I should've said thank you first, right…"

Castle laughed. "That's alright," he responded, handing her the book but withdrawing it again. "Wait, I don't know your name," he stated.

"Kate," she said and watched him take out a pen from his jacket pocket and finishing a dedication that he had obviously already written. Then he handed the book to her again.

She smiled, put the library book aside, took the new one from him and opened it to read what he had written.

When she looked up he was already walking away. "Mr Castle!" she called out after him with a huge smile on her face and he turned around. "Thank you!"

He nodded his head. "You're very welcome, Kate," he replied and with that walked away.

She grinned for the rest of the day. Her mother found her, her head still hidden in the book that was now hers and she told her about her encounter with the author himself and made Johanna laugh.

"Seems like you did get to read one of his books after all. I will hurry up now, 'cause you apparently like the books a lot."

Her daughter nodded in response, also showing her the dedication.

"Looks like you made quite the impression, those are some sweet words."

Kate smiled at her mother and then the picture faded into blackness.

* * *

><p>She woke up, better rested than she was before but with a slight disorientation. She remembered this dream clear as day but mostly because she knew it wasn't a dream.<p>

She got up from her bed, walked barefoot across her apartment to her book collection. It had grown again after the explosion in her old apartment, most of the books had been destroyed there but like a miracle there were a few that had survived, mostly because she had treasured them more than others. She now took one of them out, opening the cover and reading the slightly faded but sleekly written words that had given her so much.

_To Kate_

_May the light in your eyes always twinkle and stories fill your heart with happiness._

_Rick Castle_

She smiled, like she always did when she took out her copy of "Flowers For Your Grave", her first Castle novel that made her to the fangirl that she was. Yes, his books had been a big help after her mother's death but it was this dedication that had made her read the books in the first place. When she had nowhere to hide, nowhere to get lost and attempt to forget she had remembered this dedication. She had lost the twinkle in her eye the day her mother died. She knew that and she thought that maybe this would help her, in a way, get it back. After all, he had said that stories may fill her heart with happiness. This was too much asked though, happiness. But it was worth a try and try she did. She managed to find the copies her mother had owned, had read them, over and over again, knowing her mother had loved them. She had impatiently waited for new novels to come out, knowing that in a way, they would get her closer to her mom, or rather the memories of her. This book was proof of how many times she had read and reread them, so well that she almost knew them by heart. And also, these books inspired her to a decision that had changed her life. She was lost after the loss of her mother and couldn't focus on her studies at Stanford anymore but she hadn't known what to do until she remembered these books. She wanted to take things into her own hands and these books had shown her the way. She joined the police academy because of her mother, because of her sense of justice and because of Richard Castle's books.

Knowing that this dream was in fact a real memory made her think of all the others again. She was seventeen when she met Castle at the library and she remembered it clear as day. Why would she not remember the other times? How was it possible that she had seen him again after that day, although quite some time after but could not recognised him. She'd read his books, she'd seen him on the cover all the time and still didn't make the connection? This was not like her. She had always thought she had a pretty good memory. Maybe the reason was that he was at the playground with his daughter and she couldn't really picture him as a father back then. Or maybe they were really just dreams.

She sighed. It was still not clear to her and she knew that most likely the only way to actually find out was by asking Castle himself.

Kate then placed the book back on its place and went to start her coffee machine and disappeared in the bathroom for a quick shower. When she got out, dressed but with wet hair, the machine was ready and she let out her first coffee of the day. She towelled her hair and went looking for something edible.

That's when she could hear her phone go off in her bedroom. She went over, checked the caller ID and picked up.

"Yeah, what's new, Espo?"

"Body drop up in Bronx. They want us there."

"Body and Bronx? Don't they know we have a case?"

"Well, I don't know anything else either, we just got called in."

"Fine, I'll meet you there," she said and hung up.

She quickly called Castle, finished up in the bathroom, drained her coffee in the sink knowing Castle would bring her one and left.

She got to the crime scene faster than she'd thought. Espo and Ryan were already waiting and Beckett could see Lanie crouching over the body.

"So, why were we called in?" she asked as soon as she got out of the car and Ryan held out a card to her.

"This was found on the body," he explained with a slightly troubled look on his face. Beckett took the card only to recognise it as one of her own. She looked at Ryan, the body, the card and back to the body.

"Don' tell me…" she started but both her detectives cut in by nodding their heads.

"Tracy Alden alias Melissa Payton."

"Oh my god…That poor woman…She said she was a dead person walking if someone found out. But no one should've known…" she exclaimed, saddened by the news. "We should've put a protective detail on her, Witsec or not…"

Esposito nodded but also said, "Well, too late for that now."

Together they walked up to Lanie who was already waiting for them.

"Morning," she said, her brows furrowed.

"What do you have?"

Beckett went straight to the point, she was getting angry at those bastards for killing Melissa, probably killing Matty too and she wanted nothing more but to put this case to a close.

Lanie saw Castle coming up behind them and waited for him to join before starting.

"Single GSW to the back of her head, execution style. Prelim TOD two hours ago. Torture marks on her hands." She pointed out to the weirdly angled fingers that made Beckett shudder. Broken, probably one at a time.

"No signs of a struggle though," Lanie finished, not having much else to say as of yet.

Beckett noticed Castle's presence beside her and looked over. He looked pretty shaken. It was not every day that a witness turned up dead because of speaking to them. It happened. It happened more than one would think, but still, it was not easy.

She lightly touched his elbow, reassuring him and he gave her a faint smile.

"I'll give you more once I get to examine her. You know the drill," her friend said and Kate nodded before turning to the boys.

"Come on, let's go do our jobs. Canvass but don't expect anything. This was a professional hit and we can be pretty certain of who it was. Only problem, we still don't know him. Dig, and then dig some more, we'll go talk to the sister. Again."

They all nodded in response and went to do what they did best.

* * *

><p><em>So, did you see that one coming? Hihihi, I feel so mean...I only had her character in once but I somehow liked her...but well, such is life...<em>

_Somehow I find the dedication a bit cheesy...but well...whatever xDD I needed that after last week ;)_

_I hope you liked the chapter! Oh and as always, I LOOOOOVE reading reviews, they do kinda keep me going *wink wink* ***points to Review Button***_

_Oh, and in case you want to talk to me somewhere else, here's my Twitter account: Chastity_May but be warned, I tweet a lot...a lot, a lot...xD_

xx


	12. Chapter 11 Theories

_**A/N: **Imagine that, I managed another chapter. I apologize for letting you wait but I am quite busy at the moment. I'm very close to finishing my dissertation, unfortunately that's not everything I have to do for college right now. _

_But for one I couldn't let you wait longer for another chapter and for another I couldn't wait to write another xD Just know that the next may take a while again. This one is...rather short again compared to the others but well, doesn't really matter, does it xD _

_Oh, btw, welcome new readers! I love each and everyone of you ;) (Includes the "old" readers as well of course xD)_

_So, I think I'll let you read right now ;) Enjoy!_

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><p><strong>Chapter 11<strong>

When they arrived at Carrie Downing's apartment the door man informed them that Carrie had moved out the day before.

"Right…Should've remembered that…" Beckett mumbled, recalling Nicole telling her about the fact that her mother had been thrown out. She turned to the doorman.

"Any idea where she went?"

The doorman shook his head. But she still uses this address for her mail. She told me she'd come in to check it every day at nine."

Castle checked his watch at that. "That's in half an hour. Should we wait?" he asked directed at Beckett who nodded in response.

"There's not much else to do in half an hour."

So they waited. Carrie was on time like clockwork. At exactly nine she walked through the doors into the lobby and to the mail boxes. She didn't see the detective and her partner waiting for her in the two chairs to the left of the entrance. Only when she turned around with a letter in her hand did she spot them and a frustrated and annoyed expression darted over her face.

Beckett got up and walked towards the woman, followed by Castle. "Mrs Downing," she greeted with a nod.

"What do you want here?" the woman asked harshly as always.

"Well, for one we're going to need your new address and for the other… Have you heard anything from your sister lately?" Beckett decided to not drop the bomb right away. There was information she needed to extract first.

"Excuse me?" Carrie asked, feigning innocence, "my sister?"

"Drop the act, Mrs Downing," Beckett exclaimed, losing her patience. "We know you took in Matty at Melissa's request and raised him as your own. She came by the precinct yesterday and told us everything."

"Oh and you just believe that stupid little bitch?"

"Considering that we have heard nothing but lies from you, who do you think we would believe more?" Castle asked sarcastically. He was losing patience just as much as his partner and said partner added, "Also, our ME has found traces of blood on Matty that matched a sibling to a toe. Only it couldn't have been from Nicole because it was from a male. There is no use denying it anymore. And you did ask your ex-husband if he told Nicole something. Why don't you come clean?"

Carrie Downing snorted. "Me, coming clean? That's what you should ask my forsaken sister!" she put a hard emphasis on "sister", almost hissing the word to them, making very clear what she thought of her.  
>"Well, she did. It would be too late now anyway."<p>

That made Carrie look at the detective again, curiosity gaining the upper hand. "Why is that?"

"We found her shot in an alley a couple of hours ago. She was probably shot by a gang member of Matty's real father. Do you know anything about him?"

She shook her head no and realised that she pretty much had just given away that Detective Beckett was right, that her sister was right too and that she'd lied. "Fine then. Yes, I took Matty in. It was her idea, not mine. I was happy to give him a better life though, one he would never have been able to have with her. And about his idiot father. I have no idea. I saw him once, from afar. He slapped Melissa across the face. That's when we fought. She wouldn't do anything about it, she was far too dependent already, he had gotten her addicted to some drugs, there was no way I could talk sense into her. That was the day I gave up on her."

"How long have you known that your s- nephew was still alive?"

"He's my son, not my nephew. I raised him, that's all that count's," Carrie said to Beckett's change of words. Then she dropped her gaze and sighed.

"I didn't know," she answered the real question with a heavy sigh.

"Mrs Downing, your daughter told us about the bracelet and the message."

Beckett remembered very well that Mrs Downing had said that the message wasn't real when her ex-husband had asked her about it but something told her that there was more to it than the woman would say.

"Detective, that was not real."

"Nicole recognised the bracelet. Why shouldn't it be real?"

"I…It…It could just as well have been from one of the kidnappers. How would I know."

"So the message was real?" Castle asked and Mrs Downing shrugged.

"I mean, I don't know but the bracelet was his. It's… Melissa gave it to me. Somehow she'd figured a way to find that thing and have his name engraved. She wanted me to give it to him so he'd have at least something from her. I saw no harm in it, he would never know anyway," she shrugged and looked at Beckett again who could not quite figure this woman out. Some things she said made her seem human, a nice person who really cared about people and then she said something like this and Beckett didn't know why anyone would think like this.

She then looked at Castle. There was nothing they needed from Mrs Downing anymore for the moment except her new address.

"Where are you staying now, Mrs Downing?" she asked.

"The Gilbert Motel…For the moment."

Beckett nodded and started to walk away with Castle next to her.

"Detective?" she heard Carrie call after her.

"You'll find him, the guy who killed my sister? I mean...was it him? Was he the one who took my son too?"

There it was again, the good Mrs Downing, the one who really cared.

"We don't know yet. It is possible."

Carrie Downing nodded once, lips pressed together. She looked like she had aged another twenty years in the past five minutes.

* * *

><p>Once they were back at the precinct they stationed themselves in front of the murder board that Ryan and Esposito had updated.<p>

"There are far too many people on this board," Ryan stated and he was right. Their list of people who were involved was too long. They needed to narrow it down.

"Fine. We need something we can go on, something that will link these people to Matty. Or any of the other Downings that is."

Beckett wanted to get this sorted, get it done strategically. She folded her arms and stared at the names on the board and the boys joined her.

"Theories?" she asked to everyone around.

"Let's start with the inner circle. Nicole." Esposito suggested . "She still hasn't alibied out. Why? What could be her reason?"

"Why would she kill her brother? She has no reason. Even if she knew he wasn't her real brother, which I doubt."

"Fine Castle, got a better one?"

"Carrie. Maybe she did see Matty after all and he said he didn't want her as his mother anymore, that he wanted his real mother."

"She was drunk in her apartment, remember?"

"Not Carrie either then. Frederick?"

"I can't come up with a motive," Ryan thought aloud, "His alibi is a woman who doesn't exist though. At least not under this name. Which brings us to Giovanna Servente."

"Well, I agree on Frederick, I don't see a motive either. And he seemed very devastated when we told him."

Castle nodded his agreement to Beckett before he looked at the picture Ryan had found on the Downing Corporation Homepage. The woman on it looked like she was in her thirties, quite a few years younger than her boss who was in his fifties. She had long dark chocolaty brown and straight hair and a slight Mediterranean touch. She definitely had picked a name that went with her looks.

"What exactly did she do?" he asked and looked at Ryan.

"Well, take a guess… She was his secretary."

"How did she get the job when she doesn't even exist? I mean, they must have done a background check before employing her," Beckett wondered. She could feel Castle shift slightly beside her and knew he was about to spill one of his theories.

"How about… A foreign spy? They got her everything, her whole background, set it up so she could go there, hide in plain sight and wait for instructions from overseas…"

"And what kind of spy would that be?" Beckett asked with a raised eyebrow, trying to hide her smile without much success.

"I don't know. Some secret agency or another company, something like that…"

"Well, since we don't know anything about her, almost anything is possible. Espo, can you check with Interpol?"

Esposito threw a very sceptic look at Beckett. "You serious?"

"Well, Castle may be right thinking she's not from here. And with no identity she might just as well be someone who is on someone else's radar. We might as well check," she shrugged and Castle grinned at her.

"Still doesn't get us any further in the case, Castle…" she reminded him and he straightened his face.

"Of course, Detective. Let's get on with the list. Do we need anything from the kidnapping day anymore? Cause if we don't we could get rid of all the kids names."

Beckett nodded, stepped forward to take the eraser and cleaned the names off. They never really were supposed to be there anyways.

"Okay, who else?"

"Melissa and Connor" Ryan said, pointing at the two names.

Melissa never had been considered as a suspect and now that she was dead even less so. Her son though, was a different matter. They had nothing about Connor.

"I looked for Connor Payton but I couldn't find him. He must have his father's last name and we still don't know that."

"Okay, so basically we all agree that we have to find his father."

"Maybe we should first find a motive. Why would he kidnap his son? He has one already and he probably has a full gang of people who follow him without a blink. Why bring a boy into that circle who has lived a normal life for ten years? He would only be a threat, a weak link. Or at least a lot of work. A boy that age can remember his parents well enough to know he doesn't belong to these people."

Beckett smiled at Castle, her eyes sparkling. She loved it when he asked the right questions and this was exactly the right question. _Why bother…_

"I can understand that he wanted his first son but I don't have the impression that he's a very loving father. There _must_ be another reason," Castle added, frowning.

"But there was no ransom call. Had he wanted something, he'd have demanded it," Esposito said while walking back to the team.

"I sent them the picture," he answered Beckett's unasked and unnecessary question.

"Maybe he didn't want anyone to know. Or maybe…" she muttered.

"Maybe what?"

Beckett shushed Castle. She was thinking hard now. Castle knew the look on her face only too well and as always he tried to catch up with her thoughts and his own thoughts were racing, trying to find connections, hints, anything really.

"Carrie!" both Castle and Beckett almost screamed in unison and smiled brightly at each other. Of course they had come to the same conclusion. They missed the looks that Ryan and Esposito exchanged. Both wanted to slap the two people in front of them. How could they be such a well-oiled machine, such a perfect team and not yet be together. They finished each other's sentences, they came to the same conclusions at the same time, they completed each other and it was so obvious. The detectives shook their heads. Also, they had no idea what exactly Carrie Downing had to do with the conclusion the two others had come to.

"Care to explain?" Ryan asked and both Castle and Beckett turned their heads.

"When we were with her this morning she said something. I asked her about the bracelet that Nicole had told us about, the one she'd found in her mother's apartment. Carrie denied again that the message was real but only at first. She then said it might have been from one of the kidnappers. She knows…"

"She knows why her son got kidnapped," Castle finished impatiently. "Or at least she knows something. She must have been in contact with the guy. Maybe he made a ransom call to her or maybe blackmailed her to give her sister up."

The boys both looked at them. It made sense. Somehow at least. Then Esposito asked, "But wouldn't she have done it? Given her sister up to save her son?"

"No. If the sister was the reason, then Carrie would have been clever enough to know they wouldn't hurt Matty. They would've needed him alive to get Melissa to show up. But Melissa had given Matty away willingly, she knew he had a better life and Carrie knew that Melissa knew. And Melissa was after all her sister. She may have broken all contact but they are family nonetheless."

"Well, let's call her in then. You two can do that. I'm sure she's seen enough of Castle and me for today. We'll look for other reasons for the kidnapping and try if we can find out who the father is. I'm quite sure he won't have gotten his hands dirty himself but if we find him, we find the people who do his dirty work."

* * *

><p>She was sitting at her desk, staring into nothingness. The boys were out bringing in Carrie Downing and Castle had gone to the break room to get her another cup of coffee. She'd been on the phone with the Federal Marshalls and they had promised her to send her the files from Melissa Payton's case. She was close to finding the guy who was behind all this but it still didn't make enough sense to her. She had not had much time for others thoughts today but now she found her thoughts wandering off to the conversation she had with Lanie and to her latest dream. She had promised her best friend to come clean and tell Castle but this was neither the right time nor the right place. They were too busy with the case. And after the case she'd be too busy doing paper work. And then a new case would come and they'd be too busy again. Who was she kidding? If she was thinking like this, she would never be able to tell him. But she knew she had to. She also knew she couldn't do it just now.<p>

Although, her dream had also made her realise something else. She may not always have loved Richard Castle the way she did now, loved him the way he was, with all his craziness, childish behaviour, seriousness with his daughter, everything. She loved him with all her heart now but if she was honest with herself, she'd loved him from the moment she'd met him in the library. Back then, as a seventeen year old, it was more admiration. She'd loved his voice and still did, she'd loved his books and still did but now, she loved him. Realising that – in a way – her heart had belonged to him for so much longer made it even more real. Maybe Lanie had been right. Maybe her dreams were some kind of twist of fate, something to tell her that she needed to live her life, that she needed to take the dive.

But this wasn't the time. Not quite yet.

* * *

><p><em>Well, this was chapter 11 then. Probably not my best but well... I hope you enjoyed it anyways ;)<em>

_I've had an idea when I started this story...but I'm not sure if I should actually write it into the story cause I think it might get too much then...what do you say, are you up for some more craziness? ;) _

_And now a little advertisment xD I'm pretty sure that some of my new readers come from my lovely friend **JennaBennet**. Some of you may not know her so go over to her profile and read her story Lost in You. It's really great and it's complete =) _

_Now all there is left to say for today: Review please ;)_


	13. Chapter 12 The Family

_**A/N:** __My plot bunnies struck! And since it's November and I heard about this Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month), I decided to continue and finish this story within the month. I don't know if I'll manage but well, it's worth a try and I do have some ideas again... Since I'm working now (yay, no uni anymore) and have a blog to maintain (an actual blog, not a fanblog xD), and am busy exploring the fantastic English countryside I can't promise to update regularly. I also apologise for the VERY long silence on this story. I don't know why I stopped, somehow it didn't flow anymore...Anyways, I hope some of you are still interested in it =)_

_Anyways. I did some research for this chapter but a lot is my imagination and speculation. Oh and__I just remembered one thing about the morgue. I've read ff's where the morgue is just below the precinct. It never even occurred to me that it could be there which is why in my ff it isn't. Just in case anyone was wondering xD_

_Now, enjoy, I hope you like it even though it's not that long.  
><em>

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><p>Carrie Downing seemed to be having the habit of never being where she was supposed to be. When Ryan and Esposito arrived at the Motel, they were told – very reluctantly – that Mrs Downing had left about an hour ago and of course no one knew when she'd be back. So they got a uniform to come to the motel and wait there for her and the two Detectives then made their way down to the morgue to see if Lanie had something new on Melissa already.<p>

Once they got there they caught Lanie finishing up the autopsy so they entered to see if anything had popped up already. She threw them a slightly annoyed look for their impatience but stepped away from her work nevertheless.

"What do you need?" she asked with a raised eyebrow and Esposito grinned at her.

"Anything you got. Time of death, cause of death, murder weapon, you know the drill."

"Fine. TOD is approximately 5 to 6 am, COD is like I said a single GSW to the back of her head from a .45." She walked to the counter with all the evidence, took a bag and handed it to Esposito. "Found this, bullet fragments. The rest disappeared from the crime scene. Went right through her head, the killer must've cleaned up afterwards so no evidence. There's also gunshot residue on the back of her head, she was killed in very close proximity, execution style, like I said before."

She grabbed the evidence bag out of Esposito's hand, mumbled "lab" and placed it back with the other things before returning to the body were Ryan was leaning closer to examine the fingers.

"What happened to her fingers?" he asked, wrinkling his nose and glancing up at Lanie.

"Broken. Probably one at the time for torture. They are pre-mortem, so it's my best guess. Suggests again that there might have been two people around, one torturing her, the other restraining her since there were no signs of a struggle."

"You think they could've been the same ones as Matty's?"

"That's for you to find out, Detective Ryan, I'm only the ME here. But it is possible, since she was his mother. Oh, that reminds me, DNA tests are going to take a while, but it's very likely that she is his mother, blood type matches – which, of course, doesn't necessarily mean that they're related. "

"Why would they kill them both though…" Esposito wondered out loud, looking at his partner. "It wouldn't really make sense to kill Melissa, that only makes them look guiltier."

"Maybe they think they're clever enough to get away with it…"

Esposito shrugged just as his phone went off. He answered it, nodded and signed Ryan that they could leave. "We'll meet you there, just bring them both in," he said into the phone and turned to Ryan again.

"Carrie got back with her therapist. Might be interesting to interview them both."

Ryan nodded and walked to the door. "Thanks, Dr Parish," he said before heading out, leaving Esposito behind who grabbed Lanie and kissed her.

"Oi, Javier Esposito, I thought we had a deal! Not at work!"

He just grinned at her and made his way to the door as well, signing her that he'd call while she stood there, looking at him with crossed arms and a raised eyebrow that only made him grin more.

* * *

><p>Meanwhile Beckett and Castle were brooding over the case files that had arrived from the Federal Marshals. They had not found anything that would really help them yet. There were several names that popped up but none of them was in any way suggesting to be the head of the gang. At least they had managed to figure out that it was a gang that originated in Colombia.<p>

"Melissa really did get herself into huge trouble with this gang… Family business from what I can see which would explain why the guy took Connor but it still doesn't explain Matty…"

Beckett nodded in response but didn't look up from her file.

"This particular cell looks like pure family business but there's no trace of the head in any file…Maybe because there isn't really one… Look –" Beckett held her file so that Castle could see, " – they are not just a gang. They're an active cell. Small compared to the others, but they definitely belong to the Cali!"

"You mean, _the_ Cali?" Castle asked back and looked closer.

"Yes, those ones."

"That sure sounds like trouble."

"Yeah. But it's still strange. I mean for one, I don't think the guy Melissa called Chris ever got caught despite what she said. Those boys got imprisoned for drug dealing, one for murder, another for assault but none seems to be the leader, the question is, if he didn't get caught, why didn't he go after her?"

"Maybe he wanted her to think she's safe, so she would let her guard down and he could find her more easily."

"Possible. But she went straight into protective custody and then she got shipped to Europe with WITSEC."  
>"Maybe he knew that?"<p>

"And left her to live her life for so many years? I don't think so. He lost trace of her and had to find her again."

"Then there's gotta be some trace of his witch hunt."

Beckett looked up from the files that she'd been staring at for most of the conversation just because she was hoping something might catch her eye. Now he had her full attention.

"You're right. During those years he must have looked for her. Otherwise he wouldn't have found her in France. And even if he asked on the streets for her, someone might know."

Before they could start their inquiry, the elevator doors opened and Ryan and Esposito and two uniforms walked into the bull pen with Carrie and her therapist. Beckett got up immediately and informed the boys about Castle's theory.

"Which cell is it?" asked Esposito.

"They're a split from the Cali Cartel. First records of them being in New York come from the 1970s. They've got a lot of smaller cells and this one is definitely into Narco-trafficking."

"I thought the Cali got shut down years ago," Ryan said

"Well, only six of the seven heads got arrested and they may well have continued their business from within prison. At least, they were suspected of doing so. The seventh head must still be out there and these guys report to him or a new one. Well, maybe not directly but they're part of this Cartel.

Espo, take some uniforms and hit the streets. See if you can find out anything about this cell and especially, if they asked for Melissa after she got out of prison. Ryan, you take Mrs Downing, Castle and I will talk to the therapist."

The boys nodded and while Esposito went back to the elevator, Ryan disappeared in Interrogation One and Castle and Beckett sat down opposite Carrie's therapist in the interview lounge.

"Doctor?" Beckett began and the therapist obliged with a kind smile, "Hamsford. Doctor Eliah Hamsford."

"Dr Hamsford, I am sorry to bother you with this, but you might be able to shed some light on the Downings for us.

He nodded. "I will try to help you as far as my confidentiality allows me to."

"Well, I understand that. However, we do need some answers. How long have you been treating Mrs Downing?"

Dr Hamsford hesitated, weighing his duty to Mrs Downing and his wish to help and after a few seconds he sight. "Oh well. I've been her therapist for almost fourteen years."

"For… fourteen years?" Castle asked, making a double take with his head. "That's an awful lot of time in therapy…"

Dr Hamsford nodded. "I can't tell you much, I'm sure you'll understand, but I can say that Mrs Downing was of a rather insecure nature when she first came to me."

"Mrs Downing insecure? I can hardly imagine that. She seems very sure about what she says and does."

"She has a certain air about her, doesn't she," he chuckled, "she tried to be like that the first time she came in. Tried to hide behind it. I got to her rather quickly though and she stayed. She didn't have to. We basically had everything sorted out. As far as things can get sorted out. She decided to try without our sessions and then Matty got taken. It made her fall further back than when she came in the first time. We've been working on it ever since."

Beckett nodded, knowing the feeling of talking to a therapist. It was like talking to someone with X-Ray-Vision. There was hardly chance of just leaving, any shrink would get to you eventually.

"Has she ever told you about anything strange happening to her after the kidnapping?" she asked but Hamsford shook his head.

"She only wanted me to help her cope with the situation. She talked about how it made her feel, about how she couldn't stand living with the rest of the family anymore and that she had to leave. That was all."

"Didn't you find it curious that she wanted to leave?"

"No, not at all. When something like this happens, when a child gets taken, the parents tend to blame each other."

"Yes, but they still had Nicole. And Matthew wasn't their biological child."

"Carrie still raised him."

"So you're saying she loved him like her own."

"I would never doubt that."

"Then why do you think was she the one to lose faith in him being alive somewhere?"

At this point Eliah Hamsford refused to answer any more questions without Carries consent and hid behind his confidentiality which mad Beckett throw a frustrated look at Castle. She got up nonetheless and told Dr Hamsford that he was free to go.

Then they walked into Observation One to see how far Ryan had gotten with Carrie Downing.

"And you are sure you've never seen this before?" the Detective asked her again, showing her the evidence bag with the bracelet in it that they recovered in her Motel room.

Carrie shook her head.

"So you don't recall telling Detective Beckett and Mr Castle about it this morning."

"No, I don't. Look, you don't have anything on me to hold me here, if you don't mind, I would like to call my lawyer now."

"Shit…" mumbled Beckett beside Castle behind the one-way glass.

"Well, I'm surprised she didn't lawyer up sooner…" He looked at the woman on the other side and tried to imagine being in her position, trying to imagine what he would do.

"Beckett? Do you mind?" he asked, pointing at the Interrogation Room.

She shrugged her shoulders and invited him to go in, knocking on the glass so Ryan would know.

Then she watched as Castle entered the room and gave Mrs Downing a sympathetic smile.

"Hi again," he greeted but only got a blank stare.

"Carrie, I know you probably don't want to speak to any of us right now, I probably wouldn't either if I were you but here's the thing," he opened his wallet and got a picture out that he lay in front of Mrs Downing, "remember her? That's my daughter, Alexis. She's Nicole's age, we met at parent nights."

"So?"

"So, I am a parent too. I worry constantly about Alexis and I would do anything to keep her save. But if she got taken away from me and I had the slightest proof that she was still alive, I would do anything to get her back, absolutely anything. Except for keeping quiet about it."

"What if you were being told to shut up about it or someone else you love would be taken from you as well?"

She said it in a whisper, hardly audible and not meant to be said out loud at all. But both Ryan and Castle and also Beckett behind the glass heard it.

"What did you say?" Ryan asked urgently.

"I said, what if you were being threatened not to say a word or else your other child would die."

"Is that what happened?"

"I am not saying anything anymore. You already know too much."

"Mrs Downing," Ryan pressed on, "Matthew is gone."

"But Nicole is still alive. And if they find out I said as much as I did, someone else is going to get hurt. They already killed my sister and her son, I won't lose anyone else over this!"

* * *

><p>"Can we hold her?"<p>

"Not for long. Once her lawyer gets here, he'll tell us that she told us everything she knows even if it's not true and we'll have to let her go. She's not a suspect…" Beckett said as her phone started to ring.

"Detective Beckett? Oh, Espo. Got anything? Hang on, I'll put you on speaker!"

"We asked around a little. This was a very long time ago so it was a long shot from the start. But, we've got something. Word of Melissa Peyton being back in the States got around here. Apparently she was on a hit list for quite some time and when she got back in, people wanted to know if she still was. Well, here's the thing. She wasn't. But, a guy remembers a woman telling some of those people that Melissa was off limits."

"Did you ask him if he knew her?"

"Of course I did. He says she's known as Belladonna, like the deadly flower. She is part of the Cali cell in New York, stakes out targets, puts them down with poison if necessary but mostly, she acts in the background."

"Belladonna…doesn't give us much to go on. Got a description?"

"Brunette, straight long hair, mediteranean look. Sounds familiar? I thought so too, I flashed him the picture of Giovanna Servente. My guy identified her as Belladonna."

* * *

><p><em>We're getting somewhere, aren't we ;D<em>


End file.
